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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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WASHINGTON IRVING. 



AMERICAN AUTHORS 



FOR 



YOUNG FOLKS 



BY 
AMANDA B HARRIS 

Author of 
Wild Flowers and Where they Grow 
Field, Wood, and Meadow Rambles 
Dooryard Folks 

aud others 



" OCT 7 lefU'y. 



BOSTON 
D LOTHROP COMPANY 

FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS 



Copyright 1887 

BY 

D LoTHROP Company 



CONTENTS. 



I. Washington Irving . 

II. James Fenimore Cooper . 

III. William Hickling Prescott 

IV. Ralph Waldo Emerson 

V. Nathaniel Hawthorne ♦ . 

VI. Harriet Beecher Stowe . 

VII. Alice and Phcebe Gary 

VIII. Bayard Taylor .... 

IX. Henry David Thoreau, and other ' 
OF-DOOR " Writers . 

X. Francis Parkman 

XI. George William Curtis . 

XII. Donald Grant Mitchell . 

XIII. " H. H." and others . 

XIV. James Russell Lowell 



Out- 



Pagb. 
II 
29 

49 

69 

87 

107 

125 

141 

163 

185 
207 
227 

243 
^65 



PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR 
YOUNG FOLKS. 



I. 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 



LET US suppose," as that charming story-teller, 
Annie Keary, used to begin, "let us sup- 
pose " that these young people have never read 
Washington Irving, or never read him except in 
school-book " exercises." There they may have had 
a page or two out of Rip Van Winkle ; perhaps the 
ludicrous description of Ichabod Crane, his school 
and his horse ; possibly a mutilated chapter from 
the Alhambra — just enough to give a taste, yet 
just enough to spoil the subject. 

But do they really know Rip, and his dog Wolf ? 
Poor vagabond Rip with his twenty years' sleep ! 



12 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

If not, they have missed one of the masterpieces 
of English prose, not a sentence of which could be 
spared. Some things are simply perfect, complete, 
all right just as they stand, so that 

One shade the more, one ray the less 
Would half impair the nameless grace, 

and this is of the happy number — an inspiration. 
Nor is there anything to be taken from or added 
to the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Have you, my 
young people, read it as it stands — all about the 
perturbations and whimsicalities of pedagogue Icha- 
bod, and that distracting piece of naughtiness, 
Katrina Van Tassel ? Have you ever tried to 
imagine Sleepy Hollow, that drowsy place, immortal 
valley on the Hudson that will be famous as long 
as American literature lasts ? or, in your " mind's 
eye "have you seen the queer, gabled, Dutch houses 
of old Knickerbocker New York, in the days of the 
renowned Wouter Van Twiller ? where the burgher 
used to sit "on the bench at the door of his white- 
washed house," under the sycamore or willow and 
smoke the sultry afternoon through, "listening to 



WASHINGTON IRVING. I3 

the clucking of his hens, the cackling of his geese, 
and the sonorous grunting of his swine," where, 
" the grass grew quietly in the highway — the bleat- 
ing sheep and frolicsome calves sported about the 
verdant ridge where now the Broadway loungers 
take their morning stroll." 

And have you been in the Alhambra, and heard 
the drip of the fountain in the court of that beauti- 
ful Morisco palace, while you listened to legends of 
Granada till the streets seemed alive with Moorish 
warriors, and the past of five centuries ago came 
back? If not, you do not know Irving; for it is 
Dutch life on the Hudson and in New Amsterdam, 
and the stories of Moorish ascendency and of con- 
quest in Spain, which most truly represent him. 

Irving's subjects can be put easily into groups, 
with few exceptions ; and any one who would 
thoroughly read him, can take his books in that 
way. 

It would hardly be worth your while to spare the 
time for the Salmagundi papers, which were the 
earliest he wrote ; and you could make a long skip 
over years and space, as well as titles, to Spain, 



14 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

and begin there. So you come at once to some of 
his best work, to be sure; but what better starting 
place, for there you have several volumes which 
belong together and make a brilliant period in 
romantic history. 

So Spain be it then ; and first, Legends of the 
Conquest of Spain, then, in this order, although it is 
not the one in which they were written, Moorish 
Chronicles, Tales of the Alhambra, Chronicles of the 
Conquest of Granada. By that time you will be 
steeped in romantic adventure by land, and will be 
ready for the Life of Columbus, and then for Spanish 
Voyages of Discovery, which come right along chron- 
ologically. 

Of the Spanish books, the Columbus was the first 
written. The author had already won fame when 
in 1826 he made his temporary home in Madrid, 
and with abundance of public documents and pri- 
vate manuscripts at hand, including the archives 
of the Columbus family, prepared the life of the 
great navigator, making the only full account there 
is in English, with all the charm of Irving's incom- 
parable style. 



WASHINGTON IRVING. I5 

This book hath Kinship with the epic old, 
That sings of Ithacus, the searcher bold : 
The Homer touch — the purple light is here, 
That makes men heroes, heroes gods appear ! 

What a happy inspiration was that which came to 
him of writing it ! for out of it grew all the others. 
He had a great deal of sentiment and romance 
about him, and that was the country of all the 
world to fascinate him ; and the more he wrote of 
Spain, the more the witchery of the subject took 
hold of him. Happy inspiration in its results to 
us and to all future readers and travellers. He 
enriched our literature with the treasures he 
brought forth, and cast such a spell over the 
country itself that people from all lands where his 
name is known visit the Alhambra, because by the 
magic of his genius, that old castelated palace has 
become consecrated with 

The light that never was on sea or land. 

He chose a period rich in romantic episodes and 
brilliant deeds, when " every man lived with sword 
in hand," and there was " scarcely a commanding 



1 6 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

cliff or hill-top but had its castle," and gave us the 
chronicles of the Conquest of Granada, which he is 
said to have himself regarded as almost the best 
of all he had written, when in the maturity of his 
powers and before the fire of enthusiasm had begun 
to die out ; he was aglow with his subject, as a 
writer should be, full of it, living while he wrote 
" in a world of dreams." It is a picturesque book ; 
one for boys to revel in, with its alarms and 
tumults, its cavalcades of Moorish warriors, its 
drums and trumpets, banners and glitter of arms ; 
the clang of weapons, the tramp of mailed men, the 
neighing and clattering of steeds, the sounds of 
war, of triumph, are heard along its pages ; one 
sees the mountain defiles, the city with its Moorish 
architecture, the plains where armies meet, Fer- 
dinand and Isabella in royal state, the last Moorish 
king, Saracen and Christian, cavalier and monk — 
what pageants, what splendor and stir, what 
pictures, what an unfolding of events ! 

I come now, by this arrangement (which you 
understand is purely arbitrary, but which seems to 
me a convenient one for you), to the chief biog- 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 1 7 

raphies ; Mahomet and his Successors, which does 
not profess to do anything more than put into 
handy volume shape the facts and legends about 
the prophet; the Life of Oliver Goldsntith, one of 
the most captivating of books, to which Irving 
gave "as graphic a style," he said, as he could 
command, being himself in love with his subject 
— a rarely attractive subject, too,was warm-hearted, 
homely, ungainly, thriftless, amiable " Goldy," poor 
Goldy ! ^ith his buoyancy, his haps and mishaps, 
his improvidence, his irresponsibility, his wander- 
ing life, his impulses that were often right but as 
likely to be wrong — was there ever such another, 
such a luckless man, but thrice fortunate in the 
gentle and genial humorist who wrote his life ; 
and third, Irving's last work, on which he was 
engaged for years, broken by many interruptions 
of ill-health and a long absence in Europe, the 
Life of Washington, full of incident, and altogether 
a good thing, though without the flashes of genius 
of some of his earlier productions. 

Still another group — his western books, made, 
says some one, "for the market," but capital read- 



1 8 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

ing for all that : A Tour on the Prairies, Astoria, 
and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville. It was 
in 1832 that he took his trip, and wrote about it 
.graphically — he could not have done otherwise 
— then, under the second title, a history of the 
fur trade which has all the elements for a story, 
and last, the adventures of a French soldier, Bonne- 
ville who became a famous hunter and trapper 
and spent three years among or beyond the Rocky 
Mountains prior to 1835. 

But he might have written all these and yet 
would not have been in the sense that he now is, 
our Irving, but for the Mynheers, Rip, Ichabod, 
Sleepy Hollow, Communipan, Mannahata, Wol- 
fert's Roost and the Dutch traditions belonging to 
them. Here he is purely American, without an 
imitator, for after his Knickerbocker and kindred 
papers, who so presumptuous as to attempt to fol- 
low ? Full of " local color," as artists say, he has 
made that one portion of our country classic ground. 
The Hudson River valley is so full of Irving that 
not a traveller can pass that way without being re- 
minded of him. 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 19 

Next after the Salmagundi Papers (which have 
that admirable sketch, " The Little Man in Black "), 
he published in 1809, being then twenty-six years 
old, that masterly piece of humorous writing, as 
original as it is whimsical, Diedrich Knickerbock- 
er's History of New York. It is too wordy, and 
the humor is sometimes broad, but irresistibly 
droll and full of merriment from beginning to end. 
Fancy the wicked enjoyment Irving must have had 
in describing those old Dutch worthies, like Wouter 
Van Twiller, who " conceived every object on so 
comprehensive a scale that he had not room in his 
head to turn it over and examine both sides of it, 
so that he always remained in doubt, merely in 
consequence of the magnitude of his ideas," who 
had lived in the world for years " without feeling 
the least curiosity to know whether the sun revolved 
round it, or it round the sun." Over the queer 
doings and thunderings, the rollicking life of those 
smoking, eating, drinking, dozing Dutch founders 
of New Amsterdam Sir Walter Scott said he laughed 
till his sides ached. 

Ten years later came into print the first part of 



20 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

The Sketch-Book^ made up of refined essays, which 
at once brought him fame in England, but " floated," 
as one writer says, by "' Rip Van Winkle," and 
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." He further says 
that if in the changes that may come " the bulk of 
Irving's works shall go out of print, a volume made 
up of his Knickerbocker history and the legends 
relating to the region of New York and the Hud- 
son would survive as long as anything that has 
been produced in this country." 

For aught we know, that story of Rip is, in some 
form, as old as the world ; for similar traditions of 
long sleep and awakening to strangest of surprises 
are in oriental and in classic literature and may be in 
the folk-lore of all nations — but what a use he made, 
of it ! And you know how Joe Jefferson has person- 
ated the character — I hardly dare venture to guess 
how many times. Several years after the death of 
Irving, it was dramatized by Dion Boucicault, who 
said to the actor, " I would prefer to start him in 
the play as a young scamp — thoughtless, gay, just 
such a curly-headed fellow as all the village girls 
would love and the children and dogs would run 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 21 

after ; " and he did, though at first Jefferson " threw 
up his hands in despair " at the new idea. Boucicault 
did not call it much of a literary production and 
said when it was done, " It is a poor thing, Joe." 
He replied, "Well, it is good enough for me." 
And it was a hit. What houses have laughed and 
wept over it, and how many hearts have been 
thrilled by that one question, " Are we so soon for- 
got when we are gone ? " 

Before Washington Irving we had no American 
literature ; writers, it is true, but he was the first 
to make it known abroad if he may not indeed be 
said to have begun to create it. His style had 
a quality which at once commanded attention. 
To see in what that literary excellence consisted 
let us take at random a passage out of Rip Van 
Winkle ; this : 

In a long ramble of the kind, on a fine autumnal day, Rip 
had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of 
the Kaatskill mountains. He was after his favourite sport of 
squirrel-shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re- 
echoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, 
he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll cov- 



22 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

ered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a 
precipice. From an opening between the trees, he could 
overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich wood- 
land. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far be- 
low him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the 
reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, 
here and there sleeping on its glossy bosom, and at last los- 
ing itself in the blue highlands. 

It is a bit of simple description, nothing more, 
but it tells a great deal in few words and fitting. 
Take it apart, analyze it, define the words, mark 
well the construction and relations, and see if it 
could be improved, if anything could be spared. 
It looks like an easy thing to do to write in that 
style, but try it, and you will find that you are 
baffled, that there is a subtle something which will 
elude you ; the words and sentences will, under 
your hand, become provokingly unmanageable ; 
you will find it exceedingly difficult to say just 
what you wish to in just the right words, no others, 
no more, and no less. 

There is a fitness, grace, dignity, refinement and 
elegance about the style of Washington Irving 



WASHINGTON IRVING, 23 

which have always been recognized and admired. 
It is true that it lacks in nerve and virile force when 
brought into comparison with some modern writers. 
One page of Carlyle has more brawn and muscle, 
more " attack " in it, so to speak, than the longest 
essay that Irving ever wrote ; nevertheless, it is 
not without power of its own — as in Bryant's 
highly finished verse, the polishing has not worn it 
away to insipidity ; no one feels the lack of vigor, 
and all do feel its charm. It is the language of a 
cultivated gentleman whose habit of thought was 
that of a gentleman, of one accustomed to think in 
pure, good English as well as speak and write it — 
indeed the latter would follow as a matter of course. 
In 1835 the North American Review pronounced 
him "the best living writer of English prose." 

You will notice another thing, and that is that 
he likes to leave a pleasant impression ; unlike 
some authors, who make you uncomfortable, he 
1 pleases and entertains. Yet he was never sanguine 
about the result of his writing, being so sensitive 
that a word of adverse criticism " upset " him for 
days \ he was always inclined to depreciate himself, 



24 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

was capricious about his fits of working, and had 
long periods of feeling incompetent to do anything. 
When The Sketch-Book came into print, it met with 
such success that he was fairly overpowered and 
was afraid he could never do so well again ; and 
yet that was almost at the beginning of his literary 
career, and besides all the books named above, he 
afterwards wrote of the essay-ish or story kind. 
The Talcs of a Traveller, Wolf erf s Roost, Abbotsford 
and Newstead Abbey, the collection called Crayon 
Miscellany, and those flattering impressions of Eng- 
lish life in a country home, Bracebridge Hall, told 
in a manner which constantly reminds one of Addi- 
son and the Sir Roger de Coverley papers. 

Washington Irving was born in New York City, 
April 3, 1783, and as a boy is described as "hand- 
some, tender-hearted, truthful, susceptible," a 
" dawdler in routine studies," but, boy-like, fond 
of Fil^rMs Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Sinbad, 
Orlando Furioso, and a devourer of " books of voy- 
ages and travels," growing up so delicate that at 
twenty-one he was sent for his health to Europe, 
where he picked up much general information and 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 25 

knowledge of the world, all of which came into use 
when he began to write. He became a great 
favorite in society, had eyes that laughed and a 
smile which no one could resist ; and his winning 
qualities stayed by him through life. 

He was away two years, went abroad again in 
18 15 for a short sojourn, but remained seventeen, 
then came home to settle down as he hoped, but 
in 1842 was appointed Minister to Spain and spent 
the next four years at the court of Madrid. The 
story of his life is too well known to need telling. 

Home once more, and for good, with his house 
full of nieces and other near relatives, at his " dear, 
little Sunnyside," the Dutch stone house over-run 
with ivy from a slip brought from fair Melrose, a 
poet's retreat, now hallowed and historic, where 
honored and beloved he spent his remaining years ; 
going down now and then to New York, where 
George William Curtis says he used to see him, a 
" quaint figure in the little Talma cloak," with a 
" springing step and cheery twinkle of the eye as 
he passed along Broadway." (You will find about 
him in one of the " Easy Chair " papers, and see 



26 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

how he looked in his old age with his " chirping, 
cheery, old school air,") 

He died on the 28th of November, 1859, and was 
buried near his favorite Sleepy Hollow. 

Note. — A nearly complete list of his works is as follows : 
Salmagundi, History of New York, Sketch-Book, Bracebridge 
Hall, Tales of aTraveller, Life of Columbus, Conquest of Gra- 
nada, Tales of the Alhavibra, Moorish Chronicles, Legends of 
the Conquest of Spain, Spanish Voyages, Tour on the Prairies, 
Astoria, Adventures of Captain Bonneville, Life of Margaret 
Davidson, Life of Goldsmith, Life of Campbell, Life of 
Mahomet, Wolf erf s Roost, Crayon Papers, A bbotsford and New- 
stead Abbey, Life of Washingtoji. (It is not practicable to 
give each title with exactness, as they vary in different edi- 
tions, and collections have been published with varying 
titles.) Pierre M. Irving, a nephew, edited his Life and 
Letters, and Charles Dudley Warner has lately edited a 
Life of Washington Irving, for the "American Men of Letters " 
Series. A sketch of " Sunnyside and its Proprietor " may be 
found in Tuckerman's Homes of American Authors ; and, 
finally, the " Irving Centenary Number " of The Critic gives 
several personal reminiscences and criticisms and a bibliog- 
raphy. Recently there has been published a luxurious book, 
by A. E. P. Searing, with more than fifty engravings of 
scenery, entitled The Land of Rip Van Winkle. 




<J. 7€<y? c-r>7 er-^:^ (J^'o c>/ 



II. 

/ 

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 

THE second writer to show to the world that 
we in America were to have a literature of 
our own, was the man whose name stands above. 
Irving was just beginning to be famous when 
Cooper began. It is a fact worth remembering, 
too, that it v/as about the period when Walter Scott 
was at the height of his popularity, and that this 
new American novelist who was destined to 
similar popularity among his own countrymen, 
launched his first book in the same year (1820) 
that Ivanhoe appeared. 

It was from no purpose, from no following a 
natural bent, but the result of an impulse, an un- 
expected coming true of what was spoken in sport- 
ive boast, that made Cooper an author. Nothing 

in his past had turned him in that direction ; he 
29 



30 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

was thirty years old, and having no si^ecial profes- 
sion, had apparently settled down as a sort of gen- 
tleman farmer, engaged in looking after his estate, 
planting trees and living the country life he was 
always so fond of. That this should have been 
broken in upon the way it was, and that he should 
have written more than thirty novels besides other 
books during the next thirty years, were circum- 
stances that must have seemed to him as extraor- 
dinary as they do to us. 

He happened one day to be reading to his wife 
an English society novel, and not being pleased 
with it, he laid it down, saying, " I believe I 
could write a better story myself," and set to 
work and wrote Precaution ; whether as good or not, 
tradition does not tell, but probably quite equal to 
any of its class — which is not saying that it is in the 
least attractive. He had a poor opinion of it, and 
perhaps there his authorship might have ended but 
for some of his friends, who said as he had done 
fairly well with a subject he knew nothing about — 
English society — he must try his hand at some- 
thing he was acquainted with. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 3 1 

The result was The Spy, in which he created one 
of his best-known characters from humble Hfe, 
Harvey Birch, The scene where the story was 
laid was the battle-ground of a great deal of par- 
tisan warfare during the Revolution, and some of 
the incidents he worked up he had heard from the 
lips of survivors. The pictures of country life and 
hospitality at the Westchester home were no doubt 
true to the life ; and who can doubt, while he laughs 
over it, that the good cheer at the grand dinner- 
party at the Locusts had some foundation in fact "i 
— when "the formal procession from the kitchen 
to the parlor commenced," and Cffisar led the van, 
supporting a turkey on the palms of his hands, the 
servant of Captain Lawton following with a Vir- 
ginia ham, next the valet of Colonel Wellmere 
with fricasseed chickens and oyster patties, after 
him the attendant of Doctor Sitgreaves with an 
enormous tureen of soup, next another trooper with 
a pair of roasted ducks, followed by a white ser- 
vant boy groaning under a load of vegetables ; all 
these things having been deposited on the table, 
Caesar led the march back to the kitchen, soon re- 



32 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

turning again, at the head of the procession, con- 
ve3'ing " whole flocks of pigeons, certain bevies of 
quails, shoals of flat-fish, bass, and sundry wood- 
cock ; and the third attack brought potatoes, 
onions, beets, cold-slaw, rice, and all the other 
minutiae of a goodly dinner." 

The next subject chosen was the frontier life 
which he had been familiar with in his childhood 
in the valley of the Otsego, and he wrote The 
Pioneers. It has been complained of it that the 
descriptions clog the story, but therein, and in the 
introduction of Natty Bumppo, lies the charm of 
the book. Every chapter shows that it was written 
with love and how happy he was in bringing out of 
the past all those events and scenes of a back- 
woodsman's life. The aspects of winter scenery, 
the wood-chopping, the maple-sugar making, the 
fishing and woodcraft, the hunting, and the spear- 
ing of bass by torchlight, are some of its best 
points ; and the free-hand touch in that wilderness 
story was never surpassed in the later and more 
artistic novels of the "Leather Stocking Series," 
of which this was pioneer in fact as well as title. 



JAMES FEmMORE COOPER. 33 

Just here you may need to be reminded that 
Cooper was one of the first to describe natural scen- 
ery, and mark the changes of the sylvan year ; not 
with the fine analysis and discrimination of such 
later writers as Thoreau and John Burroughs, but 
with broad sweeps, which served well their purpose 
since we were made to feel that we were there, in 
the forest, that the freshness of the primitive wil- 
derness was ours, the aroma of the pines and hem- 
locks in every breath of the air, that any moment 
a deer might bound across our path, that civiliza- 
tion was away behind — we had left it and come 
joyfully into this new, green, rustling, balsam- 
scented world where Leather Stocking roamed with 
all the freedom of Robin Hood in Sherwood For- 
est, without Robin's outlaw doings. 

No sooner had Cooper begun on this line of fic- 
tion, than a circumstance occurred which directed 
him into another, and he wrote a sea story. At a 
dinner party where he was present, the conver- 
sation turned on The Pirate of Sir Walter Scott, 
just published, in which the eye of one skilled in 
nautical affairs could discern some errors that none 



34 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR VOUNG FOLKS. 

but a landsman would have fallen into. Our 
author, who in his youth had spent a year before 
the mast in a merchant vessel, and been midship- 
man three years, attempted to convince the com- 
pany that if Scott had been a seaman he could 
have made a more effectual use of his materials ; 
and so thinking, *' I must write one more book — 
a sea tale — to see what can be done in that way 
by a sailor," he said to his wife. 

Thus The Pilot had its origin, with John Paul 
Jones for the leading personage, though the true 
hero was another of his strong characters out of 
humble life. Long Tom Coffin of Nantucket, who 
was born on the ocean and chose to die there, who 
could not find his way when he was put on shore, 
who believed it was a " rank lie " those men had 
told him, that there " was as much arth as water 
in the world ; " for, said he : 

I've sailed with a blowing sheet months an-end without 
falling in with as much land or rock as would answer a gull 

to lay its eggs on Give me a plenty of sea-room 

and good canvas, where there is no occasion for pilots at 
all, sir. For my part, I was born on board a chibacco-man, 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 35 

and never could see the use of more land than here and 
there a small island to raise a few vegetables and to dry your 
fish on. 

Cooper meant to have "resuscitated" him in 
later stories, as he did Natty Bumppo ; but it is 
perhajDs quite as well that our last look of the sim- 
ple-hearted old cockswain was on the morning 
after that night of terror, when he went down, alone, 
with the vessel he loved so well, sinking with the 
wreck of the Ariel in the overwhelming sea. In 
the later sea-stories, of more or less excellence, 
more skilfully constructed, he never surpassed in 
thrilling power two or three scenes in this. 

In the succession of novels, he varied from land 
to ocean, the sea-stories coming along at intervals, 
being written at different places. The Red Rover 
came into life at a little hamlet near Paris (during 
a long residence of himself and family in Europe ), 
whence his imagination transported him to the 
scene of the opening chapters, Newport, Rhode 
Island, where we make the acquaintance of the 
vessels and men who are to be concerned in those 
exciting events, pursuit, sea-fight, wreck, height- 



2,6 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

ened by the terrors of a tornado — so rapid, so 
vivid, so well managed that we half incline to place 
it second in merit. T/ie Water Witch, written two 
years later, has a jaunty, foreign air, and can more 
properly be called a romance. The Wi?ig and 
Wing was a favorite with him, though just why one 
can hardly see ; the vessel is a French privateer in 
the Mediterranean, and the sailors and other char- 
acters are of several nationalities, chief among 
them Ithuel Bolt, one of the New Englanders 
whom Cooper had little love for, usually making 
them hypocrites, or coarse and vulgar. In the same 
year with the last, was written The Two Admirals, 
one of the most spirited, narrating the evolutions 
of fleets instead of single ships. 

He composed and wrote rapidly, and no sooner 
was one olif his hands than he planned another, 
sometimes carrying along two together, as in the 
case oi Jack Tier and The Crater, neither of which 
ranks with his best, while both have a good deal 
of power in certain chapters and keep their inter- 
est nearly to the end. The time of the first is the 
Mexican War, and the action takes place near the 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 37 

Dry Tortugas and neighboring reefs ; thus Cooper 
takes advantage of many localities, and uses mu- 
tiny, abandonment, all thrilling episodes on board 
ship and war of elements, and puts a seaman's 
knowledge and resources to severest test. There 
is not one of the sea-stories without brilliant and 
commanding passages. In Jack Tier is drawn with 
a bold hand one type of captain, that cruel, coarse 
" old sea-dog, Stephen Spike, skipper of the Molly 
Swash,'" and the escape from the sharks, the oc- 
currences at the lighthouse and the firing at the 
supposed ghost of the man Spike had abandoned 
to his fate are in the author's best manner. As 
for T7ie Crater it is like Jules Verne in preposterous 
improbability, but the details of life there and at 
Rancocus Island are Robinson Crusoe-ish in>their 
fascination. 

Another which tells how The Sea Lions, two ships 
of the same name, go down to the southern seas 
in search of seals, has some strong chapters where 
the men are ice-bound and experience the awful 
rigors of an antarctic winter ; and probably no 
such picture of the appalling desolation of Cape 



38 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Plorn and the loneliness of the infinite ocean can 
be found in any other writing : 

Directly ahead of the schooner rose a sort of pyramid of 
broken rocks, which occupying a small island stood isolated 
in a measure, and some distance in advance o£ other and 
equally ragged ranges of mountains, which belonged also to 
islands detached from the mainland thousands of years be- 
fore, under some violent convulsion of nature 

" You know the spot, do you, Stephen ? " demanded Bos- 
well Gardner, with interest. 

" Yes, sir, there's no mistake. That's the Horn. Eleven 
times have I doubled it, and this is the third time that I've 
been so close in as to get a fair sight of it. Once I went in- 
side as I've told you, sir." 

" I have doubled it six times myself," said Gardner, " but 
never saw it before. Most navigators give it a wide berth. 
'Tis said to be the stormiest place on the known earth." 

The men had climbed it, and saw the limitless of world 
water : — 

The earth probably does not contain a more remarkable 
sentinel than this pyramid on which our hero had now taken 
his station. There it stood, actually the Ultima Thule of this 
vast continent. . . . The eye saw to the right, the Pa- 
cific ; in front was the Southern or Antarctic ocean, and to 
the left was the great Atlantic. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 39 

True or imaginar}', Cooper never drew a more 
vivid picture than in that thirteenth chapter, of 
which a few extracts give only a faint idea. 

Afloat and Ashore ?ig2an takes him on the sea ; this, 
his first book in autobiographic form, leaves the 
hero drowning, but the sequel, Miles WalUngford, 
picks him *up. Satanstoe, also an autobiography, 
has a sequel, The Chainbearcr. The four have 
much to do with colonial life in New York ; doubt- 
less " Clawbonny," the home of Miles, is a fair 
representation, with its one-story, gabled stone 
house, " to which had been added until the whole 
structure got to resemble a cluster of cottages 
thrown together without the least attention to 
order or regularity," orchards, meadows, ploughed 
fields all around, barns, granaries of solid stone, 
a comfortable, cosey country place. Lucy Hard- 
ing in the two stories, and Anneke Mordaunt in 
Satanstoe, are Cooper's most clearly defined hero- 
ines. Usually they are so vague and tame there 
is nothing to remember them by ; there is hardly 
so much stamina in them all as would furnish one 
Jane Eyre, or Jeanie Deans, or Dinah Morris. 



40 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

You cannot even tell in what story Alice was, or 
what Cora did, or keep Ellen separate in your 
mind from Elizabeth or Mabel. They are lovely, 
or they would not be heroines, and for the same 
reason they are loved ; they journey into the wil- 
derness and have adventures, but the pattern is 
much the same wherever found. 

Satanstoe is a neck of land, a farm, the home of 
the Littlepage family, from which the young heir 
goes forth, seeing the word up towards the frontier, 
Albany way, at a period of which Mrs. Grant wrote 
in her Afnerican Lady, which Cooper often refers to 
and would have advised one to take in collateral 
reading, as he would Parkman's Montcalm and 
Wolfe, if it had then been written. In this spirited 
and fine novel, the heir, Corny, sees Dutch life, has 
experiences in Albany, goes coasting in the streets 
and engages in the mad pranks of the young men, 
makes the acquaintance of that vigorously drawn 
roysterer, Guert Ten Eyck, and is one of the party 
who have the sleighride on the Hudson on the eve 
when the ice is breaking up — one of the most 
curdling passages in modern fiction. The Chain- 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 41 

bearer continues the narrative, with less spirit, how- 
ever, till you come to the episode of the squatters, 
Thousandacres, his gaunt wife, his half-savage 
sons and the girl, Lowina, which is drawn with a 
masterly hand. 

It is not practicable in one short paper to run 




OTSEGO HALL. — FROM DRAWING BY MISS COOPER. 

over the whole of Cooper's novels. He was a very 
uneven writer ; a few of the books are poor and 
tiresome, others, like The Wept of Wish-ton- Wish and 
Wyandotte, are of medium quality, while certain of 
the sea-stories and the Leather-Stocking Tales are 
of superlative excellence. These need no exposi- 



42 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

tion, no commendation. He was master of that 
kind of fiction which owes its interest to incident 
and adventures ; swift in movement, picturesque 
in treatment. How fresh and exhilarating after 
the staple novels of mediaeval life, castles, knight- 
errantry, kings and courts, society in foreign capi- 
tals, artificiality, must have been The Pioneers and 
those that followed in the series ! He had created 
a new kind of romance. These stories of life on the 
frontier, of the backwoodsmen, Indians, the wilder- 
ness, were a novelty. We have to thank him for 
and give him the honor of the true American novel 
in literature ; and at this late day no one need feel 
called upon to find fault with him for not being 
artistic, or for not developing character. Later 
writers may and do excel in those respects, but we 
have only one Cooper, and his best books hold the 
ground, always popular with a large class. 

The question has been asked if he really knew 
the man, "Natty Bumppo." It does not matter. 
Was he real ? Every schoolboy believes in him, al- 
most from the moment when he appears, standing 
six feet in his stockings, tall, wiry, sandy-haired. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 43 

with gray eyes under shaggy brows, in fox-skin 
cap, in coat and leggings and moccasons of deer- 
skin, with leathern pouch, powder horn, rifle, and 
the old hound, Hector. He refuses to be made a 
myth of. Leather Stocking has a foothold on the 
soil, and he will keep it. 

The author had an intimate fondness for him. 
Clearly to Cooper he was real. See how careful a 
study he makes of his character in the ninth chap- 
ter of The Pathfinder; if it had been George Wash- 
ington, he would not have done it more faithfully ; 
and in Home as Found Eve Effingham says : 

There, near the small house that is erected over a spring 
of delicious water, stood the hut of Natty Bumppo, once 
known throughout all these mountains as a renowned hunter ; 
a man who had the simplicity of a woodsman, the heroism 
of a savage, the faith of a Christian, and the feelings of a 
poet. A better than he, after his fashion, seldom lived. 

In the preface to The Pathfinder is an explana- 
tion of the order in which the five stories of The 
Leather Stocking series naturally come. The 
latest of Cooper's critics, Prof. Lounsbury, says : 



44 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOXTNG FOLKS. 

" The life of Leather Stocking was now a com- 
plete drama in five acts ; beginning with the first 
war-path in The Deerslayer, followed by his career 
of activity and love in The Last of the Mohicans 
and The Pathfinder^ and his old age and death in 
The Pioneers and The Prairie." 

Of Cooper's Indians, he says : 

" But whether his representation be true or false, 
it has from that time to this profoundly affected pub- 
lic opinion. Throughout the whole civilized world 
the conception of the Indian character as Cooper 
drew it in The Last of the Mohicans, and further elab- 
orated it in the later Leather-Stocking Tales, has 
taken permanent hold of the imaginations of men," 

For yourselves, you must bring your own judg- 
ment to bear on the question after you have read 
The Conspiracy of Pontiac, and Montcalm and Wolfe 
by Parkman — history set against romance. 

From the " Introductions," by the author's 
daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper, in a late edition 
of the novels, many facts about his life may be 
gathered, and at the end are notes about the an- 
cestral home on Otsego Lake. Especially valua- 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, 45 

ble are the description and notes in The Pioneers. 
In scenes of The Deerslayer he closely describes 
the Otsego prior to the time when the first rude 
settlement was begun on its banks. The rock of 
the rendezvous is still known as Otsego Rock. In 
the ninth and eleventh chapters of Hotne as Foimd, 
the mountain called " The Vision " and the village 
of Templeton ( before described in 77ie Pioneers) 
show us the Cooper home. It is interesting to 
trace Cooper and his pursuits in this way. 

He was born in Burlington, N. J., September 15, 
1790, and two months later the family moved up 
into the new country near the head-waters of the 
Susquehanna on Otsego Lake, where he spent his 
childhood and his later years. It was the place 
dearest on earth to him ; he loved every inch of 
its soil, and the Lake (the Glimmerglass of his 
novels ), was a perpetual delight to him. He en- 
joyed a farm he had up among the hills, called the 
" Chalet," and v/as fond of all domestic animals ; 
had a favorite cat which sat on his shoulder while 
he wrote, and when he visited the barn quarters 
a whole procession of poultry, cows, oxen, horses, 



46 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

dogs, cats, would gather about him and follow him. 
He died in Cooperstown, September 14, 1851. 
The town, whose name is a memorial of him, keeps 
a reminder of his novels in the names given to 
picturesque spots he had already made the world 
familiar with ; the little steamer that plies on the 
lake is called the Natty Bumppo, and a marble 
statue of Natty, rifle in hand and hound looking 
up into his face, has been placed on a point over- 
looking the cemetery where Cooper is buried. 

Note. — A list of Cooper's novels is as follows : The Spy, 
The Pioneers, The Pilot, The Last of the Mohteans, The Red 
Rcroer, The Prairie, The Water Witch, The Pathfinder, The 
Deerslayer, The Two Ad7nirals, The Wing-and- Wing, Afloat 
and Ashore, Miles Wallingford, Satanstoe, The Chainbearer, 
The Sea-Lions, The Bravo, Jack Tier, The Crater, The Wept 
of Wish-ton-Wish, Wyandotte, Homeward Botind, Home as 
Found, Lionel Lincoln, The Headstnan, Mercedes of Castile, 
The Heidenmauer, The Red-Skins, The Manikins, Precaution, 
The Oak Openings, The Ways of the Hour. The six last 
named are poor, and the four next preceding are of compari- 
tively small value. It is better to read the best ones twice 
than spend time on the others. He wrote several volumes 
of travels, other miscellaneous works, and a history of the 
navy of the United States, and biographies of distinguished 
American naval officers. As it was his request that no 
" authorized account of his life " be written, there is no biog- 
raphy of importance except that in the American " Men of 
Letters " Series, by Professor Lounsbury, which gives a fine 
critical estimate of his writings. 




WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. 



III. 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 

IF you wish to see how highly favored you are in 
your historians, in your Macaulay and Green, 
your Bancroft and Prescott and Palfrey and Motley 
and Parkman, with all their richness of language, 
their pleasant way of using incidents and power of 
making history attractive, you need to be put on a 
probation of Hume — a penitential one you would 
find it — till you came to fully appreciate your priv- 
ileges and see what you have to be thankful for. 

Hume was the bane of my childhood. It was 
early impressed upon me, enjoined upon me, that 
I must read Hume's History of England. I must 
forego the Ossian, the Shenstone, the Campbell, 
the Burns, the Spectator, the Rambler, and ( saddest 
of all ) The Scottish Chiefs, which stood, all gay in 
scarlet morocco and gilding, or rich in russet, a 
49 



50 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS, 

tempting row of twenty-six volumes on the uppei* 
shelf. Next below, sizing up, were books of the 
stature of ChesterfieUr s Letters, Tytler, the Idler^ 
Junius' Letters and Bennett's Letters; and then 
that almost hateful row of nine — I doubt not they 
are in all old-fashioned libraries in just the same 
style of binding — in leathern covers, with a red 
morocco strip near the top, like a bandage, for the 
gilt-lettered title, and a green one near the bottom 
for volume and author, part labeled " Hume," then 
three " Smollett," and then " Bissett " — a trying 
mystery to me was that — if the history was by 
Hume ; but I found out later. 

Dry old Hume ! If I had not known him so long 
I should love him more. I had to begin on him at 
ten; and can I ever forget the dreariness of the 
"tonnage and poundage," and the wonder what it 
could mean, and why there was so much of it.' 
Revenues to the crown, confiscations, prorogations 
of Parliament had some meaning that a child could 
vaguely grasp at, but that " tonnage and poundage " 
fairly conquered m'y faculties, swallowed up what 
little intelligence I had. It was my refreshment, 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 51 

my spot of green in the desert, to read the page 
where the death of the king came in, and the names 
of his children were given ( even they were often 
"issue," instead of sons and daughters), Con- 
stance, Agatha, Adela, Maud — how delicious ! I 
luxuriated in, dreamed over, dwelt upon any kind 
of a passage dug out of the dreariness which seemed 
to bring anything personal, human, life-like before 
me. That a king should have a surname, that John 
should be called "Jackland," and Henry " Beau- 
clerc " was a keen delight, and the first Richard 
was the world's hero for all time for the sake of 
that magic " Lion-hearted." And dare I say that 
in the general aridity, the strangling of the little 
princes, the drowning of Clarence in the butt of 
Malmsey, and the episodes connected with Henry's 
six wives were events to be turned to with eager 
interest instead of the proper horror ! 

It was after too much Hume that Prescott came 
to my relief. History could be made interesting 
it seemed ; its personages were not like the dry 
bones of the valley ; it was practicable to marshal 
them before one as men and women who had acta- 



52 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

ally lived. The work that told me this was his 
first : the History of the R^gji of Ferdinand and 
Isabella — a period of three important events, the 
discovery of America, the conquest of the Moors 
in Spain, the establishment of the Inquisition ; and 
during their reign three celebrated personages in 
Spanish history were actors, Columbus, Cardinal 
Ximenes ( the great statesman ), and Gonsalvo de 
Cordova, " the great Captain." 

But instead of dwelling upon the great historical 
works of this author, with which you surely ought 
to have already become acquainted, let us take a 
long look back and see why he wrote history, and 
how he did it. After that, if you have failed to 
read him, you will do so with keener interest from 
knowing the difficulties he had to conquer. And 
if haply you are familiar with those books, you will 
enjoy them the more. 

William Hickling Prescott was born in Salem, 
Mass., May 4, 1796. You can see how naturally 
his imagination must have helped in his work, vivi- 
fying and brightening it, when you are told that as 
a boy he was exceedingly susceptible to all stories 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 53 

t)f adventure and romance, and that books of that 
class were his favorites ; he had games where sol- 
diers were the actors, and with one of his school- 
mates used to have fanciful personal combats as in 
the days of chivalry, the two having appropriated 
for their use portions of old armor from among the 
curiosities in the Boston Athenaeum, and they took 
turns in telling each other interminable stories of 
their own invention, those of Prescott being the 
wildest and most incredible. 

At fifteen he entered Harvard College, dreading 
the examination, but he did himself great credit, 
and on the following day wrote to his father that 
the President sent down a dish of pears to the 
candidates, and treated them like gentlemen, and 
that he felt twenty pounds lighter after it was over. 
He had not been long in college when the accident 
occurred which destroyed the sight of one eye for- 
ever, and before a year and a half had passed the 
other was so badly affected that he went to stay a 
while at the Azores for a remedy ; but growing 
worse, was shut in a totally dark room for six weeks, 
where he took his exercise by walking across the 



54 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

floor, " hundreds of miles in all," he said, and 
amused himself by singing, always cheerful, always 
patient, as he continued to be through his whole 
life. 

This walking, for the sake of both his physical 
and mental well-being, one hears a good deal about 
later; in his increasing blindness it became an 
absolute necessity, a part of his carefully regulated 
plan, to keep himself in condition for his work, and 
at one time he was in the habit of walking six miles 
a day ; at his beloved country home in Pepperell 
there was a path worn in the sod which his feet had 
made, and one most pathetic incident is told of 
him when towards the close of his life he had a 
house at Lynn, and as there was hardly a tree on 
the place, he used to walk round and round in the 
shade of the broad branches of a cherry-tree, " a 
certain length of time every day, and there," says 
his biographer, " he soon wore a path in the green- 
sward, and so deep did it at last become, that now 
— four years since any foot has pressed it — the 
marks still remain, as a sad memorial of his in- 
firmity." 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 55 

After a visit to Europe he came home not much 
improved in eyesight, and was obliged to give up 
his early plans in consequence, but he deliberately 
chose as the occupation of his life, literary work ; 
and what do you think his memoranda for prepara- 
tion w^as ? Though already an educated man, this 
was the preparatory course of study he marked out: 

" I. Principles of grammar, correct writing, etc ; 
2, Compendious history of North America ; 3. Fine 
prose-writers of English from Roger Ascham to the 
present day, principally with reference to their 
mode of writing — not including historians, except 
as far as requisite for an acquaintance with style. 
4. Latin classics one hour a day." 

And "he studied as if he had been a schoolboy," 
Blair's Rhetoric, Murray's Grammar, and "the 
prefatory matter of Johnson's Dictionary' for the 
grammatical portion of his task," and then " took 
up the series of good English writers, studying 
enough of each to get an idea of his style and gen- 
eral characteristics," and so for nearly one year 
occupied himself ; which I call your attention to in 
order to show you how he began with the elements, 



56 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

and with what thoroughness he fitted himself for 
future work. A study of Prescott's painstaking, 
his systematic industry, and discipline of himself, 
is well worth the while of any young person, and is 
calculated to reprove certain flippant and super- 
ficial ideas about " getting an education " which 
are too common. In his own person he exalted 
the task-work of learning and made it heroic, while 
his simple earnestness and teachableness, like those 
of a child, throw a great charm around this phase 
of his life. Prescott the man, in his study, strug- 
gling with his life-long infirmity, calling himself to 
account for the least ill-use of his time and powers, 
always serene, master of himself — Prescott as the 
man is even greater than the historian. 

After his year of English, he spent one in a se- 
rious study of French literature, and in the third 
he began Italian ; next he became interested in 
Spanish, and says in a letter to Bancroft that he 
is "battling with it," but doubts if "there are 
many valuable things that the Key of Knowledge 
will unlock in that language," never dreaming 
of the career which that very language was to open 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 57 

to him. Having eventually decided upon histori- 
cal composition he deliberated long upon the sub- 
ject, and made this note : " I subscribe to the 
history of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. 
January 19th, 1826 ; " and beneath, years after, he 
wrote : " A fortunate choice. May, 1847." 

He made a list of several hundred volumes to 
be read or consulted ; and with regard to his par- 
tial blindness, he writes : " What I can't read may 
be read to me. I will secure what I can of the 
foreign tongues, and leave the English to my sec- 
retary. When I can't get six, get four hours a day. 
. . I must confine myself to what exclusively and 
directly concerns it [my subject] . . I must make 
memoranda accurate and brief of every book I 
read for this object." 

He thought that " travelling at this lame gait," 
he might yet hope in five or six years to reach the 
goal ; " but it took twice that time. Of one of his 
secretaries, he writes to a friend : 

" My excellent reader and present scribe reads 
to me Spanish with a true Castilian accent two 
hours a day without understanding a word of it. 



58 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

What do you think of this for the temperature of 
the dog-days ? And which would you rather be, the 
reader or the readee?" 

What a prodigious power of memory and mental 
assimilation that he could "digest while sitting 
alone in his study the material of four hours' read- 
ing which he had been listening to; " more wonder- 
ful stili. that he could think over a mass of matter 
and compose in his memory, carrying along what 
would fill fifty or sixty pages of printed text, keep- 
i 4 it for several days, running it over and over, 
r «e going over in his mind a single chapter of 
One of his histories sixteen times, to be entirely 
satisfied with its composition ! 

For the first chapter of Ferdinand and Isabella, 
he was three months reading and taking notes. 
When you think of such preparation, supplemented 
by such mental labor, will you not read that his- 
tory with reverence for the tireless spirit, the pa- 
tient hand of the author? When it was com- 
pleted he calculated that he had spent on it ten of 
the best years of his life, but it had been, he says, 
" a continual source of pleasure," with all its dis- 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 59 

advantages, and this little record reads : " There 
is no happiness so great as that of a permanent 
and lively interest in some intellectual labor;" 
but he had the elements for enjoyment in himself, 
in his well-regulated spirit, his learning, his sunny 
temperament, his affability towards others. One 
of his friends said, " He could be happy in more 
ways, and more happy in any one of them, than 
any other person I have ever known." 

As a specimen of his style, here is the descrip- 
tion of the future queen, the patroness of Colum- 
bus, as she was at nineteen, the time of her marriage 
with her cousin Ferdinand — that event which 
united the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile : 

Isabella was a year older than her lover. In stature she 
was somewhat above the middle size. Her complexion was 
fair ; her hair of a bright chestnut color inclining to red ; 
and her mild blue eye beamed with intelligence and sensi- 
bility. She was exceedingly beautiful : " the handsomest 
lady," said one of her household, " whom I ever beheld, and 
the most gracious in her manners." The portrait, still ex- 
isting of her in the royal palace, is conspicuous for an open 
symmetry of features, indicative of the natural serenity of 
temper, and that beautiful harmony of intellectual and moral 



6o PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

qualities, which most distinguished her. She was dignified 
in her demeanor, and modest even to a degree of reserve. 
She spoke the Castilian language with more than usual ele- 
gance ; and early imbibed a relish for letters, in which she 
was superior to Ferdinand, whose education in this particu- 
lar seems to have been neglected. 

This you will see is a highly elaborated, a carefully 
considered style ; but in his next work, the History 
of The Conquest of Mexico, it becomes, as the critics 
of that day were not slow to notice, " richer, freer, 
more animated and graceful." This second work, 
which he began after a little rest, naturally came 
easier and was more speedily brought to a close, 
having been finished in about four years. He had 
by this time become accustomed to historical com- 
position, had more confidence in himself, and was 
able to break away from any arbitrary restrictions 
which had almost unconsciously influenced him. 
He says of this period : " I wrote with much less 
fastidiousness and elaboration. Yet I rarely wrote 
without revolving the chapter half a dozen times in 
my mind. But I did not podder over particulai? 
phrases." 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 6 1 

The Co7iqiiest of Mexico is a far more absorbing 
work ; the subject was a grand one, the situations 
were often highly romantic, as often tragic. What 
conditions for poem or story in some of the adven- 
tures, as of the young prince who saw his father 
beheaded while he himself was concealed in the 
branches of a tree overhead ! His vicissitudes 
and perils equal in interest those of Alfred of Eng- 
land, or Charles II., or the "Young Chevalier;" 
for instance, one day while playing ball in the 
court-yard of his own palace, a party of soldiers 
came with orders to kill him on the spot ; the boy 
invited them into the palace, and while they were 
feasting, he passed into the next saloon through 
a passage, still keeping within their sight until his 
attendants by flinging spices and aromatics upon 
a burning censer in the ante-room raised such a 
cloud of incense as hid him from their view, and 
when it had passed off he was gone, having escaped 
by a secret passage which led to some subterranean 
apartment. 

"And now," says Prescott, on February 3, 1844, 
" now I propose to break ground on ' Peru.' I 



02 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

shall work the mine, however, at my leisure ; " but 
in 1847, it "^^s ready for the public, that most 
fascinating of all his books (to young readers at 
least), the History of the Conquest of Peru. When 
I presume to speak thus for the younger a>mong 
his admirers, it is from my own experience. Never 
had anything been to me so attractive. How sug- 
gestive of some grand looking-off place in the world 
of knowledge, as well as the natural world, was 
this passage about the mountain-chains of South 
America ! 

Arranged sometimes in a single line, though more fre- 
quently in two or three lines running parallel or obliquely to 
each other, they seem to the voyager on the ocean but one 
continuous chain ; while the huge volcanoes, which to the 
inhabitants of the table-land, look like solitary and independ- 
ent masses, appear to him only like so many peaks of the 
vast and magnificent range. So immense is the scale on 
which Nature works in these regions that it is only when 
viewed from a great distance, that the spectator can, in any 
degree, comprehend the relation of the several parts to the 
stupendous whole. 

It seemed as if the author himself entered with 
unusual zest upon the manners and customs, the 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 63 

handiwork and character of the Peruvians ; and 
intensely interesting are lais accounts of their epicu- 
rean sense of luxury in ornament ; the bridges of 
twisted osiers swaying to every motion where they 
spanned high in air, from cliliE to cliff, the darkly 
rushing streams; the perfect government of the 
Incas; the systematic arrangement and regula- 
tion of everything throughout the vast empire ; 
the post communication ; the sisterhood of " The 
Virgins of the Sun " — it was all new, graphically 
told, enchaining the attention from first to last. But 
dark and red with carnage was the history after 
Francisco Pizarro set his foot in the peaceful land, 
horrible and sickening, but you will be swept along 
by it as by irresistible destiny till you see the last 
of the Incas strangled like a vile criminal and the 
Pizarros one by one laid in their bloody graves ; 
and when all is done, lo ! it is not fiction you have 
been spending your sympathy and your tears over, 
but history, as a master-hand can conjure it up 
and fix it on the printed page. 

The last undertaking of Prescott was the His- 
tory of Philip the Second. The Spanish subjects 



64 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Still held their power over him ; see how he writes 
to Lady Lyell : " If I should go to heaven when I 
quit this dirty ball, I shall find many acquaintances 
there, and some of them very respectable, of the 
olden time. . . . Don't you think I should have a 
kindly greeting from good Isabella ? . . But there 
is one that I am sure will owe me a grudge, and 
that is the very man I have been making two big 
volumes upon. With all my good-nature I can't 
wash him even into the darkest French gray. He 
is black and all black." 

That work he never completed : on the twenty- 
eighth of January, 1859, he passed from this life. 
He had expressed a wish that before his burial, 
his dead body might be placed in the library where 
he had spent so many studious and happy hours, 
and there allowed to remain for a time ; and it 
was done. 

Dead he lay among his books, 

in the silent presence of the great host whose 
thoughts had been such joy and strength and 
inspiration to him ; " in unmoved, inaccessible 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 65 

peace ; and the lettered dead of all ages and 
climes and countries collected there seemed to 
look down upon him in their earthly and passion- 
less immortality, and claim that his name should 
hereafter be imperishably associated with theirs." 

Note. — His principal works are History of the Reign of 
Mrdinand and Isabella, Conqtiest of Mexico, Conquest of 
Peru, History of Philip the Second. His biography was writ- 
ten by George Ticknor. You will find that the paths of 
Irving, Prescott and Motley sometimes crossed one another. 
Irving at one time contemplated writing the History of 
the Conquest of Mexico, but graciously gave it up when he 
learned of Prescott's intention ; and under similar circum- 
stances Motley courteously gave up Philip the Second. The 
particulars of the former case are to be found in the life of 
Irving by his nephew ; of the latter in Ticknor's biography 
of Prescott, chap, xx- 




RALPH w.i LOG EMERSON. — Prom the bust by Mihnore. 



IV. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 



T AM curious to know," you say, " how we 
-■• young folks must go to work to become in- 
terested in the writings of Emerson." 

But why " go to work " at all ? You need not 
trouble yourself about his mysticism, or his theol- 
ogy, or try to know what "Transcendentalism" 
is, or seek to find out the deep meaning of some of 
his essays and poems. Let those matters go wholly, 
or till mature years and judgment qualify you for 
the investigation. Meanwhile, let Emerson speak 
to you for himself, in words you will find it easy 
enough to understand. 

A sweeter, serener soul than his it were hard to 
find ; he taught cheerfulness, courage, steadfast-^ 
ness ; his books are full of golden keys to unlock 

difficulties ; there are certain essays which it 
69 



70 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

would be worth your while to have always at 
hand so abounding are they in helps, such inspir- 
ation is in them. He has a power unsurpassed of 
crystallizing a thought; there it stands, finished 
and entire in one of his short sentences. Just a 
word about that style of his, which a certain critic 
said was made up of one short sentence and then 
another, and which Emerson himself said he " got 
by striking out," being acquired by a succession 
of the most careful winnowings till everything but 
the wheat, and good sound kernels at that, had 
blown away. You will observe as you become 
acquainted with his writings that he produced no 
one great work, no masterpiece standing by itself, 
but in general papers made up of detached 
thoughts which do not lose much by being taken 
away from their surroundings. 

Emerson's favorite form of writing was, as you 
are aware, the essay; not of the picturesque, 
sketchy, half-narrative kind you are familiar with 
in Irving's Sketch Book and other volumes of 
his, but condensed, epigrammatic, crammed with 
thought. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 7 1 

His first series (published in 1841, and known 
as Assays, First Series) contains twelve, from 
whicli select for your reading, those on " History," 
" Friendship " and " Heroism." What an eye- 
opener you will find that first one ! What enjoy- 
ment you will have in the grand thoughts of Em- 
erson — thoughts so crystal-clear that it would be 
an affront to your understanding to presume upon 
interpreting them. You will feel your horizon 
widen, and that you, too, are helping to make his- 
tory ; that " what Plato has thought " you may 
think, and " what has befallen any man " you can 
understand. 

Read the one on " Friendship " for the sake of 
the exalted place he gives to that relation, and to 
see how fine and pure, how noble and comforting 
it may become when his two chief elements go 
into its composition — truth and tenderness. 

For his nicety in defining a quality, which he 
possessed in affluent measure, read " Heroism," 
and see in what that special virtue consists, and 
what it has stood for in all time. 

He says : 



72 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

There is somewhat in great actions, which does not allow 
us to go behind them. . . . Heroism is an obedience 
to a secret impulse of an individual's character. ... It 
speaks the truth, and it is just, generous, hospitable, tem- 
perate. . . . it is of an undaunted boldness, and of a 
fortitude not to be wearied out. . . . If we dilate in be- 
holding the Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we 
are already domesticating the same sentiment. Let us find 
room for the great guest in our small house. . . . That 
country is the fairest, which is inhabited by the noblest 
minds. The pictures which fill the imagination in reading the 
actions of Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sidney, 
Hampden, teach us how needlessly mean our life is, that we, 
by the depth of our living, should deck it with more than 
regal or national splendor, and act on principles that should 
interest man and nature in the length of our days. 

And finally, I must quote one line on heroism 
which deserves to stand by itself : 

The day never shines in which this element may not 
work. 

The next volume, entitled Assays, Second Series 
(published in 1844), has nine subjects. You 
should read " The Poet " to learn what his defini- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 73 

tion is of a poet, of genius, of imagination, and 
how poems came to be written. Read " Charac- 
ter " — pausing over that fifth paragraph, where 
he says : 

The reason why we feel one man's presence, and do not 
feel another's, is as simple as gravity. Truth is the summit 
of being ; justice is the application of it to affairs. All in- 
dividuals stand in a scale, according to the purity of this 
element in them. 
« 

Read " Manners " (but it is not so fine as the 

essay on " Behavior," to which we come in the 
next volume, where you are told that a beautiful 
behavior "is the finest of the fine arts"); and 
read " Nature," for the sake of some delicious 
passages. 

In i860 appeared the third volume of this char- 
acter, with the title, Conduct of Life, numbering 
nine essays, the best of which for you are " Power," 
"Wealth," "Culture," "Behavior," "Considera- 
tions by the Way," and " Beauty." 

In "Power" are such thought-quickening sen- 
tences as these : 



74 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

There is always room for a man of force, and he makes 
room for many. . . . Concentration is the secret of 
strength. ... in all management of human affairs. . 

. . In human action, against the spasm of energy, we 
offset the continuity of drill. . . . Practice is nine 
tenths. 

Even to such an unlikely theme as " Wealth " he 
can bring his golden truths ; thus : ' 

Do your work, respecting the excellence of the work, and 
not its acceptableness. . . . Nothing isJaeneath you, if 
it is in the direction of your life. 

On *' Behavior," courtesy, manners, he can 
never say enough — away back in an earlier paper 
is this crystal : 

The whole of heraldry and chivalry is in courtesy. A man 
of fine manners shall pronounce your name with all the 
ornament that titles of nobility could ever add. 

And now it is : 

Manners are the happy way of doing things. . . . No 
man can resist their influence. . . . There are certain 
manners which are learned in good society of that force, 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 75 

that, if a person have them, he or she must be considered, 
and is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, wealth, 
or genius. ... I have seen manners that make a simi- 
lar impression with personal beauty ; that give the light ex- 
hilaration, and refine us like that. . . . But they must 
be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real 
beauty. . . . Then they must be inspired by the good 
heart. There is no beautificr of complexion, or form, or be- 
havior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 

That sentence I could not resist having in 
italics. It deserves to be written with a diamond 
point. The man who wrote it had the most 
charming manner; his bearing was courtesy it- 
self; his countenance was benignant, and so 
radiant with inward light that one of his biogra- 
phers, Dr. Holmes, speaks of it as "luminous." 
None had a better right to put on paper these 
sentiments and rules of conduct, for he knew in 
his own life the meaning of sincerity, integrity, af- 
fability, heroism, courtesy, culture of all that was 
noble and sweet. He says in the next essay: 

I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. . . . 
Do not make life hard to any. 



76 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

He said it was a social crime to discourage the 
young, and that " power dwells with cheerfulness, 
hope puts us in a working mood." If any morbid 
or disheartening line was ever written by Emef- 
son, I have failed to find it. On the contrary, he 
constantly helps one upward towards the sun- 
shine. They were morning thoughts that were 
his, which could front the auroral freshness of 
the new day. Sage and seer, mystic and philoso- 
pher though he was, he had an almost child-like 
artlessness of nature, with an immortal youthful- 
ness and buoyancy about him. You would have 
found him most companionable if you could have 
had the delight of being with him in a ramble 
about Concord ; unspoiled and unspoilable ; lov- 
ing beauty, seeing beauty everywhere, his imagi- 
nation clothed even 

the palpable and the familiar 
With golden exhalations of the dawn. 

You have his tenderness and child-like-ness, his 
simplicity and acceptance of an everyday truth in 
these lines in his exquisite poem to the Rhodora ; 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 77 

Rhodora ! If the sages ask thee why 

This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky, 

Dear, tell them that if eyes were made for seeing, 

Then beauty is its own excuse for being; 

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose ! 

I never thought to ask, I never knew ; 

But in my simple ignorance suppose 

The self-same power that brought me there brought you. 

For title of the fourth volume (published in 
1870) he had Society and Solitude, containing twelve 
essays, the best of which for you are " Art," " Elo- 
quence," " Domestic Life," " Books," and, if you 
have time for more, " Courage " and " Success." 

That on " Domestic Life " gives you an insight 
into the home-side of Emerson. He was warmly 
attached to his own fireside and the happy circle 
around it, as you will see in some of his letters to 
Carlyle, where he says : 

But at home I am rich, rich enough for ten brothers. My 
wife Lidian is an incarnation of Christianity — I call her 
Asia. . . . my mother, whitest, mildest, most conserva- 
tive of ladies. . . . my boy a piece of love and sun- 
shine, well worth my watching from morning till night. 



78 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Again, of his little girl, of the Ellen who was 
such a sta)^ and comfort to him in his declining 
years : 

The softest, gracef ulest little maiden alive, creeping like 
a turtle with head erect all about the house. . . . The 
boy has two deep wells for eyes, into which I gladly peer 
when I am tired. 

It was this loving and lovely boy of whom he 
had to write not long after that he had " ended 
his earthly life," and " A few weeks ago I ac- 
counted myself a very rich man, and now the 
poorest of all ; " in lament for whom he poured out 
his heart in the poem called *' Threnody," which 
is a father's fond, pathetic lingering over things 
and places made dear by the little one who had 
gone : 

His daily haunts I well discern — 
The poultry yard, the shed, the bam «=» 
And every inch of garden ground 
Paced by the blessed feet around. 
From the roadside to the brook 
Where into he loved to look. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 79 

Hop the meek birds where erst they ranged, 
The wintry garden lies unchanged, 
The brook into tlie stream runs on ; 
But the deep-eyed boy is gone. 

The last volume of essays (in 1876), is Letters 
ajid Social Aims, numbering eleven subjects. That 
on " Poetry and Imagination " covers a good deal 
of ground and is worth your careful study — first 
defining what common sense is, and then showing 
how all mankind delight in the poetic and imagi- 
native, it touches your own experience and un- 
spoken thoughts. You will enjoy meditating a 
little on his explanation of poetry as " the perpet- 
ual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing." 
In " Social Aims " you meet him again with a 
message on manners, cultivation, conversation, 
society. Hei^ is a sample of his dainty way of 
putting things : 

I think Hans Andersen's story of the cobweb cloth woven 
so fine that it was invisible — woven for the king's garment 
— must mean manners, which do really clothe a princely na- 
ture. 



8o PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Read "Eloquence." Read " Resources," to be 
reminded " that this world belongs to the ener- 
getic, that there is always a way to everything 
desirable," that courage puts a new face on every- 
thing ; and read " Greatness " that you may re- 
spect yourself more, seek the best things, and live 
for the highest good. 

Thus the five volumes properly called *' Essays," 
of which if you are to choose one for your own 
library (supposing you can have no more), and one 
at least you ought to have, let your choice be Con- 
duct of Life — suggestive title! — but then, how 
suggestive he is ! His imagination plays like 
sheet lightning, at unexpected moments, yet how 
much you see in a flash of it ! 

You will meet with many exaggerated state- 
ments in his writings, some things that have a 

« 
ludicrous aspect, some hard knots, some seeming 

contradictions, with much that is erratic, quite out 
of the common line Emersonian. You will be 
stopped by thoughts which you cannot understand, 
~~~^nd by others that you cannot accept. But even 
thus encumbered, the common-sense of Emerson 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 8l 

will be evident enough to you — and most admir- 
able common sense he had. He was shrewd, wise 
and practical, as it will not have taken you till this 
time to find out. That was one side of him — the 
side with which you have to do. The other, the 
transcendental, you will, as I have intimated, do 
well to let alone. You would become bewildered, 
lose your balance, get no good from his meaning, 
even if you could find it. Even his best friends 
did not always feel at home with him when he had 
on his robes as a mystic and a " Pantheist." 

You are. not to look on the above as the only 
books of his for your reading. By no means pass 
by English Traits, which is not a record of travel 
or description of places after the usual manner. 
He takes the measure of the English people ; con- 
siders what England is — to see which country 
well, he says, needs a hundred years. For most 
excellent examples of condensation of thought, 
virile and graphic, read the chapters on " Land," 
" Race," " Ability," " Manners," " Truth," " Char- 
acter," "Aristocracy," and "Literature." 

Another volume which he evidently had keen 



82 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

enjoyment in writing, for he was a hero- worship- 
per, is Representative Men, treating of certain lead- 
ers who were either great thinkers or men of deeds : 
namely, Plato, or the Philosopher ; Swedenborg, 
or the Mystic ; Montaigne, or the Skeptic ; Shake- 
speare, or the Poet; Napoleon, or the Man of 
the World ; Goethe, or the Writer. Lectures, ad- 
dresses, miscellanies, poems swell the amount of 
his works to a long list, but those mentioned above 
furnish you with ample material for all the time 
you can now give to this author and for all that is 
profitable for you. 

It is for his manhood as well as genius that 
Emerson deserves our reverent admiration ; for 
his life and the thoughts he contributed to Amer- 
ican literature belong together in no ordinary 
sense. He did not write one thing and live 
another ; his nature was transparent ; his heart 
was loyal to the truth whose zealous knight he 
was ; therefore, because a pure, aspiring and sin- 
cere man was back of the words he uttered, those 
words have immortal life in them. 

Nowhere was he more loved and honored than 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 83 

by his neighbors, in the historic town of Concord 
which was his home for the greater part of his life. 
He was born in Boston, May 25, 1803, but went to 
Concord (the home of his forefathers), in 1834, and 
there he died on the 27th of April, 1882. His 
first dwelling-place was the old Manse so familiar 
from Hawthorne's sketches ; afterwards he went 
to live in the square, white house on the Lexing- 
ton road which everybody who has ever been to 
that old town must remember, with the pine trees 
about it, the front-yard and garden ; an unpreten- 
tious house with plenty of windows and a sort of 
hospitable look, as if every passer was invited to 
walk down the flagstones and in at the open door. 
Sure of a welcome, it was said; and hospitality 
ought to have been graven on its lintels, for Emer- 
son delighted to be host to the stranger, to his 
townsfolk, to the little children and to the young 
people especially for whose pleasure he did so 
much, taking his reward in the sight of beaming 
faces ; and now, when he is lying in beautiful 
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, those village girls, whose 
aspirations he quickened, to whom he was helper 



84 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

and friend, show their loving remembrance by 
keeping fresh flowers on his grave. 

As you know, the Concord School of Philosophy 
devoted six or seven days to Emerson — an Emer- 
son week — when such writers and thinkers as Mrs. 
Howe, Elizabeth Peabody, Doctor Bartol, Doctor 
W. T. Harris and others discussed him ; for in- 
stance, as a poet, as an essayist, as an American, 
considering every aspect of the man, and paying 
tribute to his personal worth, his affability, and 
his high-mindedness. 

Note. — The principal works of Emerson are Essays 
{First Series), Essays (Second Series), Representative Men, 
Conduct of Life, Society and Solitude, Miscellanies, besides 
various Lectures, Addresses, brief Biographies and other 
papers. The Literary World for May, 1880, has a bibliogra- 
phy and a list of writings on Emerson up to that time, and 
the same journal for July 15, 1882, has a concordance by 
W. S. Kennedy, furnishing a partial index to familiar pas- 
sages in his poems. Of several biographies, that by George 
W. Cook has been commended as being "a careful and 
thorough analysis " of his teachings ; that by Alfred H. 
Guernsey treats of him as philosopher and poet; Moncure 
D. Conway wrote of " Emerson at Home and Abroad ; " 
Alexander Ireland's is a " Biographical Sketch," and the 
recent one by Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the " American 
Men of Letters " Series, is genial and discriminating, a run- 
ning biography done by the hand of a warm friend, with 
dashes of criticism and comment, interspersed with bits out 
of Emerson's writings. 




NATHA>aEL HAWTHORNE. 



V. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 



WE come now to an author whose writings 
are of the finest quality known in our 
literature. Of Hawthorne it has been said that 
he had " a grace, a charm, a perfection of lan- 
guage which no other American writer ever pos- 
sessed in the same degree," and that his English 
was " the most beautiful that ever was written." 

The number of volumes he produced was small ; 
compared with those of Cooper and of Irving how 
brief is the list ! But all his work has a strong 
individuality — it has the Hawthorne stamp, sign- 
manual upon it ; and the three novels The Scarlet 
Letter, The House of the Seven Gables and The 
Marble Faun hold a commanding place in the lit- 
erature of fiction. The first named (and perhaps 
the others) will always be counted in with a se- 
87 



88 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

lected number of the best novels of modern times , 
with Les Miserables of Victor Hugo, 21ie Newcomes 
of Thackeray, George Eliot's Adam Bede, Romola^ 
and Middletnarch^ Charlotte Bronte's yam Eyre 
and Villette, Scott's Ivanhoe^ Blackmore's Lorna 
Doom, Dickens' David Copperfield, with that great 
work of Mrs. Stowe, JJjide TottCs Cabin. 

Of Hawthorne's life you must already know the 
leading facts. He was born in Salem, Massa- 
chusetts, July 4th, 1804. The house was 21 
Union street. I tell you this because if you should 
happen to be in that ancient, odd, delightful little 
city of witch memory, you may like to go there. 
You will find it in a narrow, prosaic street, and 
opening right on the sidewalk — perhaps when 
you are there you will call up in your imagination 
a little, shy, handsome boy with wonderfully bril- 
liant, lustrous eyes who used sometimes to sit on 
the doorstep and look dreamily down towards the 
shipping seen in the distance. Back of it there 
used to be a garden where he said he *' rolled on 
a grass-plat under an apple-tree, and picked abun- 
dant currants." 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 89 

This garden extended back to Herbert street, 
where at Number lo, is the Manning House, the 
old family mansion of his mother, in which he 
lived at various times ; and it is especially inter- 
esting because there, in the "haunted chamber," 
which was " the antechamber of his fame," he 
says, after leaving college, " I sat myself down to 
consider what pursuit in life I was best fit for. 
. . . And year after year I kept on consider- 
ing what I was fit for, and time and my destiny 
decided that I was to be the writer that I am," 
He had read " endlessly all sorts of good and 
good-for-nothing books," had made a special, ar- 
tistic study of novels, and had scribbled sketches 
and stories, most of which he burned ; a few of 
them, however, began to appear in magazines and 
in the " annuals " of those days, without his name, 
but attracting attention by the subtlety of imag- 
ination shown in them and by their fine literary 
workmanship ; and in 1837, when he was nearly 
a middle-aged man, the first volume of Twice Told 
Tales was published. He had become known as 
a man of letters. 



90 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

In that " tall, ugly, old, grayish " house (these 
are his adjectives), he lived in great seclusion, 
taking his vi^alks at twilight, making few acquaint- 
ances, only coming out of his " owls' nest " at 
last when his book made him known and he was 
compelled into society ; but in that quiet and 
solitude he seems to have been able to discipline 
his mind for the work before him. Those were 
years of preparation, whether he had a conscious- 
ness of it or not. The chamber in which he kept 
his vigils is pointed out — a low-posted room, 
with a beam in sight, a corner cupboard, one 
window looking off over distant tree-tops to Mar- 
blehead, and another down into the little back 
garden of the house where he was born. 

If you go out for a stroll about Salem, you will 
inquire for the Town Pump ; and for the House 
of the Seven Gables, where poor old Hepsibah 
set out the little store of toys in the shop window, 
and where Phoebe flitted about like a butterfly. 
And probably some of whom you inquire will say 
that it is that building, or that one, just as they 
told me about Skipper Ireson's down at Marble- 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. gi 

head ; but that Hawthorne really had any one 
house in mind is not certain. Tradition says he 
had, and one in particular will be pointed out to 
you, and you will believe it, just as I wanted to, 
and would, and did. As for the Custom House — 
there it is, real and tangible, with the old, decay- 
ing Derby wharf stretching down in front. Some- 
body will show you where Hawthorne purported 
to discover the manuscript of The Scarlet Letter, 
and if you ask, you will be told where you must 
go to see the old red desk at which he wrote. 

See Salem, by all means. It is the Salem of the 
Lady Arabella Johnson whom you all have known 
about from your childhood, of Endicott, of the 
witches. We have a romantic foolishness about 
some of the old world sea-towns, but this corner 
of New England is as rich in legendary lore as 
many beyond the ocean. And what an East 
Indian aroma it has, as of spices and drugs 
brought home in merchant vessels in the days 
when the willow ware and esthetic blue china that 
now are stored in the corner cupboards were in 
as common use as if no value were put upon 



92 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

them! You know that Edmund Gorse when he 
was over here went down for a day and wandered 
about, and he wrote : 

" I was deeply impressed with the strange sen- 
timent of the place, and walked about the streets 
until I was thoroughly soaked with the old Puritan 
spirit." 

Those last words may be said to represent the 
state of Hawthorne's mind. The early traditions 
of New England took a mighty hold on him ; 
especially was he wrought upon by the grimness 
and severity of Puritan life and character, and 
from the incidents with which he was familiar he 
evolved, by the subtle processes of his marvel- 
lous genius, certain great moral lessons. Many 
of his short stories might under his hand have 
been elaborated into a novel of the length of The 
Scarlet Letter^ if he had so willed. When you 
read that, and those legends of his, and The 
House of the Seven Gables, bear in mind the con- 
scientious fidelity which he brought to his task, 
and his intimate knowledge of time and place 
and circumstance. Remember that Hawthorne in 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 93 

prose, and Whittier in poetry, have done for Puri- 
tan New England, and for that particular comer 
of New England, what no other writer has ever 
done, and no coming writer can do. No more 
can Whittier's ballads and legendary verse be 
surpassed than can the two great novels of Haw- 
thorne, in their imaginative quality, insight into 
motives, and tragic power. 

As for Salem — Hawthorne is as inseparable 
from that old city as is the air that is over and 
around it. To the Salem life belong the Tivice 
Told Tales, some of which, like " A Rill from the 
Town Pump," daguerreotype the very streets. 
The Scarlet Letter had its birth there, and there 
also belongs (though written at Lenox) The House 
of the Seven Gables, and there was written the 
lovely story which his children could almost re- 
peat by heart, from hearing it read so often, " The 
Snow Image." 

If you go to Concord, so rich in its associations 
with Emerson, Thoreau and the Alcotts, you 
come right upon Hawthorne again. There is the 
old Manse, to which he took his bride, the ex- 



94 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

quisitely lovely, pensive Sophia Peabody; there 
the gifted, first child Una, darlingest little daugh- 
ter, was born (you will find sweet stories about 
this pet ** Onion " of his, in Julian Hawthorne's 
biography of his father and mother). That house 
is full of Hawthorne. Read in the preface to the 
Mosses from an old Manse and in some of the 
scraps of his " Note Books " how he lived there, 
and how he wrote, and where, and how happy he 
was. At Concord he found some of the material 
of The Blithedale Romance, based, as you know, 
upon the Brook Farm experiment of community 
of labor. 

It was at Concord that some years later on he 
bought a house. The Wayside, next to Apple- 
Clump (which is the Alcott home), where he wrote 
the second Wonder Book, and later, after return- 
ing from Europe, Our Old Home. You are aware 
that he was seven years away from this country, 
a part of the time as consul at Liverpool, the re- 
mainder travelling on the continent and living in 
Italy, and that he came home to settle down to 
domestic comfort and literary work in this house 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 95 

of his own, where he built what he had always 
longed for, a tower to write in. Failing in health 
he started on a little journey to the White Moun- 
tains, and died suddenly at Plymouth, New 
Hampshire, May 19, 1864, and was buried from 
The Wayside on the 23d, in Sleepy Hollow Cem- 
etery, just across the path from Thoreau. 

You will see that one could hardly be in Salem 
or Concord without having him constantly in 
mind, so vitally is he associated with these two 
places. 

Of all his books, the cheeriest, wholesomest, 
most delightsome are the Wonder Book and Tan- 
glcwood Tales. He wrote the first in Lenox, 
Massachusetts, where he lived for a year or more 
in a very frugal way, in a little red house which the 
family called the Red Shanty, with a Tanglewood 
back of it. Those of you who know these two 
charming books ought to know, if you do not, 
that there was a real Tanglewood porch, and 
that Shadow Brook, Bold Summit, and the Hill- 
side were real places all, and that the man who 
went nutting and skating and sliding down hill 



96 PLEASANT, AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

with the children was none other than Hawthorne 
himself, and that he was the most sunshiny, gen- 
ial, exuberant of companions, so that one of 
them said " there never was such a playmate in 
all the world " ; anybody must be an enchanting 
story-teller who would talk like this before he 
begun a tale : 

Sit down there every soul of you and be as still as so 
many mice. At the slightest interruption, whether from 
great naughty Primrose, little Dandelion, or any other, I 
shall bite the story short off between my teeth, and swallow 
the untold part. 

Such delicious stories ! They belong with the 
goodly list, by best authors, made for children's 
delectation, like The Water Babies, At the Back of 
the North Wind, and The King of the Golden River, 
books which have thrown older people into a 
" tumult of delight " and made them alraost wish 
they were children again. Hunt up the originals 
of the Wonder Book stories as they stand in the 
old Greek fables, and read them along with his 
fascinating versions. " The Golden Touch " is 
the story of Midas ; " The Paradise of Children " 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 97 

is that of Pandora, and so on ; but oh ! what a 
golden touch was Hawthorne's. Notice his mar- 
vellous skill, and the beauty of his language as 
you read ; see in " The Gorgon's Head " how 
Mercury is described when he meets Perseus in 
the solitary place ! And what could be lovelier 
than all there is about Pegasus in " The Chi- 
msera " ? 

When you read Tlie Marble Faun you should 
look up every thing relating to the statues and 
architecture he describes, for example, about the 
"Faun of Praxiteles" which Donatello resembled. 
What a world will open to you ! What winter 
evening's entertainment there will be ! This ro- 
mance was written while he was living in Italy, 
' breathing its atmosphere, amidst pictures and 
statues and antiquities. There was romance in 
the daily surroundings of the Hawthorne family, 
who had a home in a castle so big that each one 
had three or four rooms, while more than twenty 
were left for their joint occupancy. 

The fanciful story itself is only one feature ; the 
art criticism, the fine " points " he makes about 



qS pleasant authors for young folks. 

old painting and sculpture have always given it a 
high place among works of that class — far more 
common now than when he wrote it — and taken 
all in all, it is a fine illustration of Hawthorne's 
vagaries and of his style. For a fine bit, dwell 
upon that description of Miriam's studio and the 
fountain in the court. 

Everywhere in Hawthorne you find perfection 
of finish without loss of vigor ; he is as fine as he 
is strong, and it was so with him almost from the 
first. When or how he acquired that gift of writing 
no biographer can satisfactorily tell, but he had 
the indefinable quality which we call genius. When 
you come, some day, to understand the nice dis- 
tinction between that and talent, you will see why 
he takes rank with men of genius. 

It has been stated again and again that his 
manuscript had scarcely any erasures or changes, 
and few or no italics. He had the skill of so 
choosing and so using his words that there was no 
need to emphasize — the thought expressed itself. 
There was some kind of a crystallizing process in 
his own mind that not many writers are capable 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 99 

of. He meditated upon his subject, forged at it, 
hammered, wrought, finished it in his seclusion. 

If you wish to see what he could do with very 
scanty material read " The old Apple Dealer." 
You will say that it is of no account. The man 
did nothing, was nobody, said nothing and noth- 
ing happened. His was a character whose pecu- 
liarity consisted in having nothing peculiar about 
it ; all neutral tints, all negative qualities, passive ; 
but in the hands of Hawthorne, the old apple 
dealer sitting in the shadow of the " Old South " 
is made the centre of a masterly piece of work- 
manship. I might call your attention to " The 
Ambitious Guest," "Fancy's Show-box," "The 
gentle Boy " (who was Hawthorne himself, accord- 
ing to his sister-in-law. Miss Elizabeth Peabody), 
and "The Village Uncle," where a little sweet- 
heart of his is the figure which he sketches ; here 
she is, the sweet Susan, taken from life : 

You stood on the little bridge over the brook that runs 
across King's Beach into the sea. It was twilight ; the 
waves rolling in, the wind sweeping by, the crimson clouds 
fading in the west, and the silver moon brightening above 



lOO PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS, 

the hill ; and on the bridge were you, fluttering in the 
breeze like a sea-bird that might skim away at your pleas- 
ure. You seemed a daughter of the viewless wind, a crea- 
ture of the ocean foam and the crimson light, whose merry 
life was spent in dancing on the crests of the billows, that 
threw up their spray to support your footsteps. As I drew 
nearer, I fancied you akin to the race of mermaids, and 
thought how pleasant it would be to dwell with you among 
the quiet coves, in the shadow of the cliffs, and to roam 
among secluded beaches of the purest sand, and when our 
northern shores grew bleak, to haunt the islands, green and 
lonely, far amid summer seas. And yet it gladdened me, 
after all this nonsense, to find you nothing but a pretty 
young girl, sadly perplexed with the rude behavior of the 
wind about your petticoats. 

That is a sample of Hawthorne's style of writing 
at the very first, pure and limpid as water. 

It is unnecessary to indicate which of his short 
papers you should select, for you will read them 
all. For a piece of work artistic in its complete- 
ness, and at the same time showing the fanciful 
turn of his mind, there is nothing that better rep- 
resents him in small space than " David Swan " 
— you will perhaps need to read it several times 
to appreciate its quality. In the tales and sketches 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. lOI 

you will find three classes, of which his " Fire 
Worship " furnishes one example ; a second is 
illustrated by " Legends of the Province House," 
and the third is something of the fantasy kind 
which he liked to work out in a weird way, like 
"The Artist of the Beautiful" and "Brown's 
Wooden Image." 

His novels have grewsome things in them. 
There never could be anything more terrible in 
its realism, more sickening in its minuteness, 
than the eighteenth chapter of The House of the 
Seven Gables, where the Judge is dead ; but you 
should read it, full of horrors as it is, to see what 
the English language is capable of in a master's 
hand. Deeply tragic though some of the events 
are that Hawthorne treats of, you will perceive 
before you have gone far that he is dealing with 
great questions of right and wrong. Robert Coll- 
yer says that no works of fiction can be found 
" stronger in moral fibre " than his. He does not 
allow sin to be covered up, but there is an assert- 
ing of conscience, an inward retribution which 
awaits and overtakes the evil-doer. How vigi- 



I02 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

lantly his eye searched into motive, and what a 
probing power he had ! It was not his habit to 
depict characters, as Mrs. Stowe does ; but he 
had certain problems of destiny to work out, and 
he created human beings to be the object and 
subject, and when they were once in his hand 
there was no parleying with the wrong they had 
done. It has been said that the character of 
Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter is a page 
from the Book of Judgment. . 

Yet he could make some exquisite beings, and 
has given us two lovely types of maidenhood, in 
Phoebe and Hilda, both of whom are said to have 
traits of his wife. In Hie House of the Seven 
Gables you will see where the sweet little country 
girl comes in like a sunbeam, and how by a few 
dainty, dexterous touches she throws " a kindly 
and hospitable smile " over the cheerless chamber 
that Hepzibah had given her, and how she bright- 
ens the old house, and how pretty and housewifely 
her ways are. And let me remind you that Haw- 
thorne used to call his wife " Phcebe," which 
shows what favorites the name and maiden were ! 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 103 

But it is in Hilda in The Marble Faun we see 
more likeness to the wife whose rare, pure face is 
to be seen in Julian Hawthorne's biography, 
before spoken of. If there was only space to 
quote all, instead of this fragment : 

She was pretty at all times, in our native New England 
style, with her light brown ringlets, her delicately tinged 
but healthful cheek, her sensitive, intelligent, yet most femi- 
nine and kindly face. But every few moments this pretty 
and girlish face grew beautiful and striking, as some inward 
thought and feeling brightened, rose to the surface, and 
then, as it were, passed out again. ... So that it really 
seemed as if Hilda were only visible by the sunshine of her 
soul. 

Hawthorne's family life was in the sweetest, 
tenderest atmosphere, his marriage was an ideally 
happy one. He educated his children as far as 
possible at home, and was very careful of his 
little daughters. The pictures of his home are [ 
delightful. Towards the very close, at The Way- 
side, we have a glimpse of him reading all of 
Scott's novels to his wife and children, and Julian 
says: 



I04 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

"There was no conceivable entertainment 
which they would not have postponed in favor of 
this presentation of Scott through the medium of 
Hawthorne. I have never since ventured to open 
the Waverley Novels." 

This son when a child used to wonder why his 
father need write books. " He was a very good 
and satisfactory father without that." Such was 
Hawthorne, the man. 

Note. — Hawthorne's most important books are (this is 
the order for you) Grandfather''s Chair, The Wonder Book, 
Tajiglewood Tales, The Snow Image, Tzvice Told Tales, 
Mosses from an old Manse, Our old Home, Note Books 
(American, English, French and Italian), The House of the 
Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance, 
The Marble Fatin. There is A Study of Hazuthorne, by his 
son-in-law, George P. Lathrop, a biography, Nathaniel Haw- 
thorite and his Wife, by Julian Hawthorne, a biography by 
James Russell Lowell in the American Men of Letters 
Series ; and one in the English Men of Letters Series. 

That by Julian will give you most about Hawthorne as a 
man. There is also a useful Analytical Index to his works, 
in " Little Classic " form. 




- '^S' 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 



VI. 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 

YOU need no introduction to the lady whose 
name stands there, for even if you are un- 
acquainted with other books of hers — which is 
not at all probable — you know Uncle Tom's Cabin 
better than you do your spelling-book, and you 
are on as good terms with " Topsy " as with 
your own black cat that you named for her. Not 
the slightest need of saying anything about a 
book so popular all over the world, and in more 
languages than I can enumerate ; as Dr. Holmes 
read, at the garden-party in honor of Mrs. Stowe's 
seventieth birthday : 

Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane, 
Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine, 
Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi, 
107 



I08 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too, 
The Russian serf, the Polish Jew, 
Arab, Armenian and Mantchoo 
Would shout, " We know the lady I " 

There are two other forms of her literary work, 
showing other phases of her genius, that you are 
now to have brought before you — her representa- 
tions of New England life and character, as shown 
in such books as Oldtoivn Folks, and her every- 
day sort of wisdom, of which the House and Home 
Papers are example. 

Mrs. Stowe is a genuine New Englander, with 
the deepest sense of Yankee humor, and the 
most thorough appreciation of the picturesqueness 
of old-fashioned life. If you wish to see one of 
her most characteristic chapters and a capital 
sample of her off-hand, ready way of writing, take 
the opening one of The Minister's Wooing. Notice 
the happy tact in getting started : 

Mrs. Katy Scudder had invited Mrs. Brown and Mrs. 
Jones, and Deacon Twitchel's wife to take tea with her on 
the afternoon of June second, A. D. 17 — 

When one has a story to tell, one is always puzzled which 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 109 

end of it to begin at. You have a whole corps of people to 
introduce that yoii know and your reader doesn't ; and one 
thing so pre-supposes another, that whichever way you turn 
your patch-work, the figures still seem ill-arranged. The 
small item which I have given will do as well as any other 
to begin with, as it will certainly lead you to ask, " Pray, 
who was Mrs. Katy Scudder ? " — and this will start me 
systematically on my story. 

By the time you have read so far, you will feel 
sure that your author knows what she is about, 
and that she is going to act on a principle she 
once laid down for those who desire to become 
writers : " First think what you want to say, 
AND THEN SAY IT." Before you have turned the 
second leaf, you will have become aware of another 
thing — that that quick, bright brain of hers is 
peopled with New England characters, of whom 
Mrs. Katy Scudder is a representative as one 
possessing "faculty," which is a quality indige- 
nous to that locality. Here follows a part of 
Mrs. Stowe's exposition of it : 

Faculty is the greatest virtue, and shiftlessness the great- 
est vice of Yankee men and women. To her who has fac- 



no PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

ulty nothing shall be impossible. She shall scrub floors, 
wash, wring, bake, brew, and yet her hands shall be small 
and white; she shall have no perceptible income, yet be 
always handsomely dressed ; she shall have not a servant 
in her house, — with a dairy to manage, hired men to feed, 
a boarder or two to care for, unheard-of pickling and pre- 
serving to do, — and yet you commonly see her every after- 
noon sitting at her shady parlor-window behind the lilacs, 
cool and easy, hemming muslin cap-strings, or reading the 
last new book. She who hath faculty is never in a hurry, 
never behind-hand. 

In the same spirit here is Mrs. Katy's gospel, 
wherein she declares 

Never say there isn't time for a thing that ought to be 
done. If a thing is necessary, why, life is long enough to 
find a place for it. That's my doctrine. When anybody 
tells me they can't Jind time for this or that, I don't think 
much of 'em. 

In this admirable novel, which gives an insight 
into the theology of the day, portrays an old-style 
divine, and, in sharp contrast, the brilliant Aaron 
Burr, we have along the thread of the story the 
warmest, most inviting atmosphere of neighborly 
life, the quilting and gentle gossiping, the parties 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. Ill 

in the parlor and cooking in the kitchen. It is to 
this book that we owe the big-hearted, black ser- 
vant (slave indeed), Candace, " Queen of Ethi- 
opia," who, when she had her freedom given her. 
wanted them all to understand 

" dat it's my will an' pleasure to go right on doin' my work 
jes' de same: an' missis, please, I'll allers put three eggs 
in de crullers now ; an' I won't turn de wash-basin down in 
de sink, but hang it jam-up on de nail ; an' I won't pick up 
chips in a milk-pan, if I'm in ever so big a hurry." 

And to The Mifiister's Wooing we owe, too, the 
little, dapper, old-maid dressmaker. Miss Prissy 
Dimond, as nimble with her tongue as with her 
fingers, who had such professional pride in being 
able to get a wonderful dress out of a small pat- 
tern of silk ; reaching the climax of skill in mak- 
ing over a gown spoiled by another of the craft, 
and not a scrap of the goods left to do with, so 
that she had to piece " one of the sleeves twenty- 
nine times, and yet nobody would ever have known 
that there was a joining in it." 

T7ie Pearl of Orr's Island, like the above, has 
one of the delicate heroines who represents the 



112 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

ideal New England maiden, an apple-blossom of 
a girl, dainty as the sweet-brier rose, like the 
May-flower whose tints are on her cheek ; another 
of the clergy, whom Mrs. Stowe delights to por- 
tray, for she knew his kind from her childhood ; 
and two more of the typical, good old maids — 
we shall come upon the hard and cruel one in 
Miss Asphyxia in Oldtown Folks — aunt Ruey 
and her sister, aunt Roxy, who is introduced as 
presiding over the steeping of catnip tea in a 
snub-nosed tea-pot on the hearth, at the same 
time patting with a gentle tattoo on the back of a 
baby she was trotting on her knee. It is a pa- 
thetic story of the Maine coast, but brightened up 
by the " yarns " of the old sea-captain whose vivid 
imagination run away with him, and sprinkled 
with those bits of wisdom which remind us of the 
author's English cotemporary, George Eliot ; like 
aunt Roxy's remark about the bringing up chil- 
dren : 

" All children ain't alike, Mis' Kittridge. . . . This 
'un ain't like your Sally. A hen and a bumble-bee can't be 
fetched up alike, fix it how you will." 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. II3 

Or, in another story : 

A satin vest and a nutmeg-grater are both perfectly harm- 
less, and even worthy existences, but their close proximity 
on a jolting journey is not to be recommended. 

It is in Oldtown Folks that we have some of her 
boldest strokes, masterly delineations of charac- 
ter. Sam Lawson goes into the picture-gallery of 
ne'er-do-wells in fiction to which Walter Scott fur- 
nished so many subjects. See what a favorite he 
is with her : 

Work, thrift, and industry are such an incessant steam- 
power in Yankee life, that society would burn itself out 
with intense friction were there not interposed here and 
there the lubricating power of a decided do-nothing — a 
man who won't be hurried, and won't work, and will take 
his ease in his own way, in spite of the whole protest of his 
neighborhood to the contrary. 

Sam Lawson and his fireside stories, the boys 
know, or ought to know. One wonders what 
Hawthorne would have done with such a person- 
age, or with aunt Lois, or any of the inconsistent 
very faultily human beings Mrs. Stowe handles so 



114 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

easily. There is this difference between the two 
authors : she took people as she found them, and 
made us see them, natural beings whom we recog- 
nize as such ; while he furnished individuals from 
his own brain to be used in carrying out certain 
purposes he had in mind. 

If one were to select from her books the juciest 
one, the one warmest with pulsing life-blood, rich- 
est in experience, lighted up with finest humor, 
at once homely and romantic, which but Oldtown 
Folks should it be ? 

Oh ! that kitchen of the olden times, the old, clean, roomy 
New England kitchen! — who that has breakfasted, dined 
and supped in one has not cheery visions of its thrift, its 
warmth, its welcome ? 

She seems to have revelled in that culinary 
region redolent of savory odors, and besides giv- 
ing a rapturous but not over-done chapter to its 
praise in The Minister's Wooing^ and reverted to 
it lovingly and lingeringly again and again in 
other stories, she has delectable, tempting chap- 
ters where she tells of the Oldtown days. For 
three that are incomparable in what they reveal 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 1 15 

to US of a kind of life that will never be seen 
again, read VI., XXII. and XXVII., and bear in 
mind that there is a deal of family history therein. 
If you should read the biography of Lyman Beecher 
you would identify scenes, occurrences and indi- 
viduals. Harriet Beecher as a child was one of a 
family where there were sometimes thirteen, be- 
sides visitors, so that the old carry-all was forever 
on the go : there were aunts and children, faith- 
ful domestics, brewings and bakings, great festival 
days of cooking election cake and Thanksgiving 
good things, roaring fires in the wide chimney 
and big woodpiles without. You must not fail to 
associate her with that warm, generous, genial 
family life ; with the " Firelight Talks in my 
grandmother's kitchen," and the " Daily living in 
Oldtown." 

Now come we to the practical papers. Com- 
monsense is a great gift, and Mrs. Stowe possesses 
it. When we read her House and Home Talks and 
The ChiniJiey Corner, which includes Little Foxes, 
we shall appreciate it, and wish the gift was a 
more universal one. Meanwhile, let us avail our- 



Il6 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

selves of her practical way of seeing things and 
put it to personal use. If there was only space 
to quote liberally from the store-house which she, 
under the name of Christopher Crowfield wrote ! 
— about dress, cooking, economy, home-making, 
housekeeping ; wise, helpful words for everybody, 
the outcome of her own experience and keen way 
of looking on at the modes and manners of others ; 
words which are of use for every-day living, for 
nobody knew better than she that it is our com- 
mon life we need to make the most account of — 
company days can take care of themselves. The 
rambling papers with the above general titles 
cover the whole ground of which they treat, and 
family life, the home life of brothers and sisters 
and their elders, would be much sweeter, more 
delicate, refined, genial, and what home should 
be, if these things could be laid to heart. 

Read what she says about " the economy of 
beauty," and see how all things that a woman of 
a certain style touches, will "fall at once into har- 
mony and proportion." Read that admirable 
picture of a " New England saint," who was her 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. II7 

own aunt Esther. Read that tempting description 
of her library, her chimney corner, around which 
the others had pitched their winter tents, while 
" Rover makes a hearth-rug of himself in winking 
satisfaction in front of my fire," 

Of all the papers, perhaps the most helpful are 
the " Little Foxes," worthy of earnest heed, " by 
which," she says, " I mean those unsuspected, 
unwatched, insignificant, little causes that nibble 
away domestic happiness ; " and she numbers 
"the pet foxes of good people " as seven : "Fault- 
finding, Intolerance, Reticence, Irritability, Exaot- 
ingness. Discourtesy, Self-will ; " while fretfulness 
and grumbling come in as specific ones. 

Here are some of her words : 

How much more we might make of our family life, of 
our friendships, if every secret thought of love blossomed 
into a deed. . . . We can make ourselves say the kind 
things that rise in our hearts and tremble on our lips, — do 
the gentle and helpful deeds which we long to do and 
shrink back from ; and little by little it will grow easier . 

. . till the hearts in the family circle, instead of being 
so many frozen islands, shall be full of warm airs and echo- 
ing bird-voices answering back and forth with a constant 



Il8 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

melody of love. . . . I do not think that it makes family 
life more sincere, or any more honest, to have the members 
of a domestic circle feel a freedom to blurt out in each 
other's faces, without thought or care, all the disagreeable 
things that occur to them, as, for example, " How horridly 
you look this morning ! " . . " What makes you wear 
such a dreadfully unbecoming dress ?" etc. 

You will find a great deal in her writings of 
insistence upon the powers and gifts of even the 
most ordinary women and girls to make life cheer- 
ful, and praise of that "art of arts," appointing 
a household rightly and making the wheels run 
smoothly, which belongs to the " sisters of the 
most holy and blessed order of the fireside." 

She also gives much advice about writing, and 
tells (in papers in " Hearth and Home ") how 
she began at about ten or twelve years to try her 
hand at composition, how she helped her style by 
reading Ivanhoe, which she read through seven 
times within six months, till she knew most of it 
by heart. There were none but grown people's 
books in her family, but she says of herself — 
using the editorial " we : " 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. II9 

We read a few things a great many times over — read 
and thought and re-read, until the words and the sentences 
were fixed in our minds, . . . and in that slow way we 
were twenty years in learning to write — older than that be- 
fore we ever thought of having a piece in print ; and for 
years our first pieces were always given away ; . . and 
we found it pleasant to learn so, because we liked writing, 
even when we did not write well, and we loved study and 
reading and thinking for themselves, and without a dream 
of any use we might make of them or what other people 
might think of us. 

That is the way the foremost woman-writer of 
America, with gifts " of the Walter Scott pattern," 
began her literary work. It was in the parsonage 
at Litchfield, Connecticut, that the girl, Harriet 
Elizabeth Beecher, was born, June 14, 181 1 ; the 
seventh child, so you may be sure she was in no 
danger of too much coddling and petting. Part 
of her education she obtained running wild on 
the long, breezy hill of Litchfield ; and at home, 
though teachable and docile, she must have been, 
as Rose Terry Cook says, " a very little pickle " 
of a girl, for one of her mischievous acts was to 
beguile her brothers and sisters " to eat up a bag 



I20 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

of rare tulip-roots under the impression that they 
were onions and very nice." 

They were wide-awake, bright, heahhful, happy 
children in that family, in the whole numbering 
twelve, of whom eight became authors. She 
probably meant her own big and miscellaneous 
household where she says in Ohitown Folks "we 
were a sharp-cut and peculiar set in our house," 
and she surely means the comradeship of her 
childhood in the chapter where, " we begin to be 
grown-up people," and she speaks of the influences 
" all homely, innocent and pure." 

At fifteen she was associated with her talented 
sister, Catherine, in a girls' seminary at Hartford, 
at twenty-one she became the wife of Professor 
Stowe, at forty-one she wrote Uncle Tonics Cabin 
(her first printed work of much importance), and 
almost at once took the place she now occupies in 
literature, for, however admirable some of her 
later books, that was the one that made her 
famous. 

Her winter home, as you are aware, is in Man- 
darin, Florida ; her other is in Hartford. In an 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 12 1 

earlier number of Harper's Monthly it is briefly de- 
scribed — a slate-colored cottage, modestly fitted 
up, where, " a very quiet little lady, plainly attired," 
the writer of that article found her, appearing 
" the wife, the mother, the grandmother, living in 
her domestic interests, rather than the woman 
distinguished in national history and literature," 
Long may it be before she passes on to join 
the great company of immortals on the other 
side! 

Note. — A list of Mrs. Stowe's prose writings : Uncle 
Toiti's Cabin (which has been translated into nineteen dif- 
ferent tongues), Alna Gordon ( or Drcd), Agnes of Sorrento, 
The Pearl of Orr's Island, The Minister'' s Wooijig, Oldtown 
Folks, Sam Lawsoiis Oldtown Fireside Stories, My Wife and 
I, We and our Neighbors, The Mayflower and other Sketches, 
Poganuc People, House and Home Papers, The Chimney Cor- 
ner, Little Foxes, Little Pussy Willow, A Dog's Mission, 
Queer little People, Palmetto Leaves (Florida Sketches), 
Men of our Times (being brief biographies of eighteen per- 
sons whom she calls " specimen citizens," to teach how a 
Christian republic trains her sons, and how out of our so- 
ciety grow such men as Lincoln, Grant, Greeley, Farragut 
and others). 



VII. 



ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 



SEVERAL years ago — perhaps fifteen — Whit- 
tier published a sweet and tender poem, 
called " The Singer," beginning : 

Years since (but names to me before), 
Two sisters sought at eve my door ; 
Two song-birds wandering from their nest, 
A gray old farm-house in the West. 

Very likely you have it in your scrap-book, and 
may have wondered whom he meant. The two 
were Alice and Phoebe Gary, then on a sort of 
pilgrimage from their home in Ohio, to see face to 
face their literary friends in New York, and they 
kept on to Amesbury to pay the homage of admir- 
ing hearts to the Quaker poet who had written in 
kindly terms of their verse. That was in 1850 j 

I2S 



126 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Alice was then thirty, her sister twenty-six. Alice 
was the one whom he commemorated as the 
" singer " (though both were poets) in these lines, 
which were not written till twenty years after the 
visit, when he heard of her death. 

There is to me something almost as pathetic 
about the early history of these girls as there is 
about that of the Bronte sisters, though the fami- 
lies were wholly unlike ; the Carys were loving and 
confiding, whereas the Brontes while having deep 
feelings, were held from manifestations of tender- 
ness by a kind of unnatural repression that seemed 
hard, and at times almost cruel. In both households 
there were many deaths, and sorrowful fortunes ; 
in both, the children were excessively fond of out- 
of-door life, and of simple pleasures ; they dreamed 
dreams, and, shut in upon themselves, cherished 
aspirations which they shyly put into verse, and se- 
cretly sent forth into the world, of which they knew 
almost nothing, but which soon began to know 
them, and to wonder where these singing-birds 
were hidden away. Wonderful children in both 
cases, with heart-hunger and heart-break in their 



ALICE AND PHCEEE GARY. 127 

portion, and wistful longings that could not be sat- 
isfied with all the literary success that came to them. 

To know just what privations and bereavements 
Alice and Phoebe experienced, you must read the 
pathetic Memorial, written by their dear friend 
Mary Clemmer, who has just passed out of life her- 
self, and her own biography now adds one more to 
the fast-increasing list on the rolls of the dead 
whose names we know and honor. 

She tells how their father and mother began their 
married life in a new settlement in Ohio, on the 
very land where is the Clovernook of Alice's stories ; 
there they spent eighteen years of hard toil, and 
nine children were born ; Alice was the fourth, 
born on the place called Mount Healthy (near 
Cincinnati) April 26, 1820 ; Phoebe, the sixth, was 
born at Clovernook, September 24, 1824, Two 
darling sisters out of the band, Rhoda and Lucy, 
died in one year, and that was one cause of so 
much of the sadness in Alice Gary's writings. It 
was a loss and a wrench which she never could get 
over to the last day of her life. She was sensitive, 
and all such wounds cut deep, and never healed. 



128 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Neither could she ever wholly overcome the influ- 
ence of the hardships of her early life ; for even, 
towards the close, when she had everything she 
wanted, she said : 

The first fourteen years of my life it seemed as if there was 
actually nothing in existence but work. The whole family 
struggle was just for the right to live free from the curse of 
debt. My father worked early and late ; my mother's work 
was never done. The mother of nine children, with no other 
help than that of their little hands, I shall always feel that 
she was taxed beyond her strength and died before her time. 
. . . Rhoda and I pined for beauty ; but there was no 
beauty about our homely house, but that which Nature gave 
us. We hungered and thirsted for knowledge ; but there 
were not a dozen books on our family shelf, not a library 
within our reach. There was little time to study, and had 
there been more, there was no chance to learn but in the 
district school-house down the road. I never went to any 
other — not much to that. 

It is marvellous the use these two made of their 
Iwes under their depressing circumstances. After 
a step-mother came to direct the ways of the house, 
she grudged candles for them to read by when 
their day's work was done ; but the aspiring girls, 



ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 



129 



who, unknown to each other, had already begun to 
put on paper the songs that sung themselves in 
their hearts, substituted a saucer of lard with a rag 
in it, and by that light studied and wrote. Phoebe's 
first poem was published when she was only four- 
teen; and talking about it with a friend, not long 
before her death, and of her rapture when the 
newspaper came and her eyes beheld in print 
the verses she had written, she said : " O, if they 
could only look like that now, it would be better 
than money ! " She said she laughed and she 
cried : 

I did not care any more if I was poor, or my clothes plain. 
Somebody cared enough for my verses to print them, and I 
was happy. I looked with compassion on my schoolmates. 
You may know more than I do, I thought, but you can't 
write verses that are printed in a newspaper. 

Alice's first appearance was when she was sev- 
enteen, and she wrote only poetry until 1847, when 
she began a series of prose articles in the National 
Era, signed " Patty Lee." In a few years she be- 
came well and widely known by her papers on rural 
life, which are now in books with the titles Clover' 



130 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

nook (three series) and Pictures of Country Life. 
There is but one fault to be found with them, and 
that is the under-tone of sadness, before referred 
to, and which pervades many of her poems ; but 
that we can forget, in the fond and faithful por- 
traiture of scenes and characters she had known so 
well. In " My Grandfather " are some of her best 
reminiscences, of the days when she was a child 
stringing a wreath of sweet-brier berries which she 
called coral ; there is the walk to the old mill, 
along the turnpike, then into a grass-grown road : 

A narrow lane bordered on each side by old and decaying 
cherry-trees led us to the house, ancient-fashioned, with high, 
steep gables, narrow windows, and low, heavy chimneys, of 
stone. In the rear was an old mill, with a plank sloping 
from the door-sill to the ground, by way of step, and a square, 
open window in the gable, through which, with ropes and 
pulleys the grain was drawn up. . . In truth it was a lone- 
some sort of place, with dark lofts and curious binns, and 
ladders leading from place to place ; and there were cats 
creeping stealthily along the beams in wait for mice and 
swallows, if as sometimes happened, the dry nest should be 
loosened from the rafter, and the whole tumble ruinously 
down. 



ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 13I 

The mill was a favorite theme with both sisters ; 
Phcebe (who did not write much in prose) has de- 
lightful verses in the ballad of "Dovecote Mill," 
where she lets you see her heart, and tells you all 
her country love, and shows how dear was " the 
old mill rusty-red " with its moss-grown roof: 

Through a loop-hole made in the gable high, 

In and out like arrows fly 

The slender swallows swift and shy. 

And with bosoms purple, brown, and white, 
Along the eaves in the shimmering light, 
Sits a row of doves from morn till night 

jr.nd there is a great deal here, as in other poems, 
about the children, and where they played — real 
children, who seem to come out of the past and 
be living before you, as you read : 

They watched the mice through the corn sacks steal, 
The steady shower of the snowy meal, 
And the water falling over the wheel. 

Homely scenes, of simple, rustic life, told in unpre- 
tending measure — but to those of us who love 
country ways, how sweet they are ! 



132 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

One of Alice's most entertaining sketches is that 
of Mrs. Joseph Dale in her " goose-room." No 
such picture could be made now, for no such cus- 
tom, after just that pattern, can exist, Mrs. Dale, 
adhering to the primitive way, was engaged in her 
yearly picking of seventeen geese, though she was 
rich and could afford to hire some one else to do 
it, and though she had no need of the feathers, for 
says the story : 

Her down beds were stuffed already to hardness with 
feathers, but that mattered not. She would have thought 
as soon of dispensing with her extra fine blue and red woolen 
coverlids with which all the chamber closets were heaped 
and which were only taken down about the tenth of July to 
garnish the garden fence and to receive the benefit of sun 
and air, as with the seventeen geese and two or three ducks. 
But passing these peculiarities, herself and the man-servant 
and the maid-servant with the larger children more or less, 
had succeeded, after many crosses and drivings hither and 
thither, in lodging the gobblers in the vacant room of an out- 
building, denominated by common usage the goose-room. 

And there, this notable housewife, with a white 
muslin close cap on, and clad in an old-fashioned 
gown " used by her mother before her for a similar 



ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 133 

purpose," gave herself up to the stuffy, smothering 
work, emerging with a fringe of down on her eye- 
brows and around the edge of her hair. 

You feel that all these things took place pre- 
cisely as they are told ; and that Mrs. Dale, and 
Mrs. Hill, and Mrs. Troost, and the Templetons, 
and the Wetherbees, the various uncles and aunts 
and deacons were her own old neighbors. 

You know that the unfrequented road "traversed 
mostly by persons going to mill " actually existed. 
You see the horses in the door-yard, the turkeys, 
and that surly-looking little red cow with a white 
line down her back standing near a trough of water 
in the lane. Little " bits," like still-life pictures, 
are they. After all these years, and the sisters so 
long in their graves, you can see, through the words 
of Alice, what they saw — their own humble home, 
and other homes ; the old-fashioned dressers with 
the polished platters, and blue or red crockery ; 
the sanded floors, the floors scoured white with a 
strip of home-made carpet before the blue stone 
hearth of the fire-place, which was filled with green 
boughs in summer, and in winter glowed with a 



134 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

blazing wood-fire ; you can see the very room with 
its desk and table and few, plain chairs where the 
grandmother sat in her bereavement, with the 
black ribbon tied over her cap. 

You know about the farm-work, the chopping, the 
smoke-house, the sugar-camp. In that graceful 
ballad, spoken of above, the sugar-making is told 
deliciously : 

Ah ! then there was life and fun enough, 

In making the " spile " and setting the trough, 

And all, till the time of stirring off. 

They followed the sturdy hired man, 
V/ith his brawny arms and face of tan, 
Who gathered the sap each day as it ran. 

Both Alice and Phoebe delighted in these memo- 
ries, half pensive though the atmosphere was 
through which they looked back. They could 
never say enough about the gray old homestead, 
the " old house with windows to the morn ; " and 
there are always fruit-trees, cherries, and 

The old, familiar quince and apple-trees, 
Chafing against the wall with every breeze, 



ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 135 

and there are always old-fashioned flowers, lilies 
down the path, and "prince's feather at the garden 
gate," and 

. . the candytuft and the columbine 
And lady-grass like a ribbon fine, 

lilacs, and dearest of all to both, the sweet-brier, 
Phoebe writes : 

And the lilac flings her perfume wide, 
And the sweet-brier up to the lattice tied, 
Seems trying to push herself inside. 

Alice writes : 

I search and find the flower that used to grow 
Close by the door-stone of the dear, old home. 

We come to love our simple four-leaved rose, 

As if she were a sister or a friend, 
And if my eyes all flowers but one should lose, 
Our wild sweet-brier would be the one to choose. 

The love of the Clovernook days grew upon 
them, and some of the later poems, written in their 
city home, show how each was living them over, and 
it is noticeable what a similarity there is in their 
themes and also in their modes of treatment. In 



136 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

her poem "The Sight of Days gone by," where she 
calls up the new furrows, the hedges, the barn, and 
the well 

. . that we used to think ran through 
To the other side of the world, 

Alice has : 

I thought of the old barn set about 

With its stacks of sweet, dry hay ; 
Of the swallows flying in and out 

Through the gables steep and gray. 

While Phoebe in one of her poems has : 

The barn with crowded mows of hay 
And roof upheld by golden sheaves ; 

Its rows of doves at close of day 
Cooing together on the eaves. 

Both wrote a great deal of poetry, and some of 
their best pieces are to be found in school-books, 
in collections and selections, re-appearing in news- 
papers from time to time, and always favorites. 
No danger but the memory of Alice and Phoebe 
Gary will be kept green, for poems from their 
hearts go straight to the deep places where love 



ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 137 

and tenderness abide in other hearts. Phoebe had 
a more joyous temperament than Alice, and saw 
life through a more cheerful atmosphere, and in 
her home she was always brimming over with mer- 
riment and fun. 

That they should have gone to New York city to 
live, and there have become such a centre of attrac- 
tion that cultivated men and women, the choicest, 
should have delighted to gather about them, seems 
like romance. It was Alice, broken in health and 
poor, but brave and resolute, who started off to 
seek her fortune, believing that New York would 
prove a good place for literary work ; and in a 
short time she sent for Phoebe and a younger sis- 
ter, Elmina, to join her ; and there they made a 
home, writing for whatever papers would pay them, 
living frugally, and keeping out of debt. After a 
few years they were able to buy a house, where the 
two elder sisters spent the remainder of their lives, 
and in which Alice and Elmina died. To know 
how prettily and with what taste they fitted it up, 
what troops of friends they drew to it, what gra- 
cious hostesses they were, and how beautiful were 



138 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

the lives of the Gary sisters, you must read Mary 
Clemmer's book. Elmina died early ; Alice on the 
twelfth of February, 1876 ; worn out with incessant 
writing during the many later years in which she 
did not give herself needed recreation in the coun- 
try atmosphere she was born in, and which most 
probably would have given her help and healing. 

Then, it appears that for Phoebe, who had 
always depended upon her, " the very impulse and 
power to live were gone. She sank and died, be- 
cause she could not live on, in a world where her 
sister was not." Her death took place at Newport, 
Rhode Island, whither her friends had taken her, 
on July 3 1 of the same year. 

One of the last things she had read to her, while 
lying sick, was " The Singer," to which she listened 
with closed eyes, and then said, " It was all I could 
wish or ask for." 



Note. — Alice wrote Clovemook Papers ( three series ), 
Pictures of Coiatfry Life ; three novels, //agar. Married not 
J\'/ated, and the Bishop^s Son ; several volumes of poems ; 
and two collections for children, Clovertiook Children, and 
Snow Berries. Phoebe had two volumes of poems, and aided 
in editing several books. The record of their lives is in the 
Memorial by Mary Clemmer, who also edited their last 
poems. 




BAYARD TAYLOR. 



VIII. 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 



IT was the unquenchable ambition of Bayard 
Taylor to be remembered as a poet. How in- 
tense was this longing, how steadfastly he labored 
to produce poems which should endure, how per- 
sistent was his determination to do worthy work in 
this line, is shown in scores of letters to his inti- 
mate friends. As he grew older, he put away 
from him the idea that he must depend at all on 
his volumes of travel, and constantly spoke of their 
popularity as something that could not last long, 
even becoming half disgusted at being called " the 
great American traveller." Only a few years before 
his death he wrote to a friend : 

" The other day I looked into a volume of my 
travels published in 1859. Ye gods ! what a flip- 
pant style ! I assure you some things made me 
141 



142 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

wince, with a feeling almost like physical pain." 
There was no occasion for depreciating himself 
in this way. You will look long before you find 
his superior as a writer of books of travel — I am 
half ready to say you will look in vain, take him all 
in all. He did not depend on guide-books or on a 
mass of knowledge acquired in preparation for 
sight-seeing and, consequently, his letters are re- 
markably free from the statistics, traditionary lore 
and historic matter which cumber most works of 
the kind — greatly to the vexation of soul of the 
reader. 

He was an easy and natural writer, and did 
write well, notwithstanding his unmerciful criti- 
cisms of himself ; he had the fair sense of propor- 
tion which is indispensable, gave variety, and did 
not dwell too long on any one topic. 

More important than all, he was splendidly 
equipped by nature and temperament to be a trav- 
eller. He was strong and enduring, with ardor 
and buoyancy that nothing could overcome ; he 
had great joy in out-of-door life, and had a craving 
that would not be put aside to go everywhere and 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 1 43 

see everything. The spirit of adventure was born 
in him. Here is what he says of himself as a child : 

In looking back to my childhood, I can recall . . the 
intensest desire to climb upward . . . and take in a far 
wider sweep of vision ; . . I remember as distinctly as if 
it were yesterday the first time this passion was gratified. 
Looking out of the garret window, on a bright May morn- 
ing, I discovered a row of slats which had been nailed over 
the shingles for the convenience of the carpenters in roofing 
the house, and had not been removed. Here was at last a 
chance to reach the comb of the steep roof, and take my 
first look abroad into the world ! Not without some trepi- 
dation I ventured out, and was soon seated outside of the 
sharp ridge. Unknown forests, new fields and houses, ap- 
peared to my triumphant view. The prospect, though it 
did not extend more than four miles in any direction, was 
boundless. Away in the northwest, glimmering through 
the trees, was a white object, probably the front of a distant 
barn, but I shouted to the astonished servant girl who had 
just discovered me from the garden below, " I see the Falls 
of Niagara ! " 

You will think of this incident and of the child 
Bayard in his Pennsylvania home, when you come 
to some passages in his books, where he stood upon 



144 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

the high places of the world and took in the widest 
sweep of vision, in his own country, in Africa, in 
Asia, and in Northern Europe. 

A genuine, healthy-natured boy he was, who 
went fishing by torchlight, gathered lobelia and 
sumach to provide himself with pocket money, did 
chores and foddered the cattle at night and then 
sat down to his beloved books — a few of them his 
own, bought with money he earned by picking 
nuts — reading everything he could lay his hands 
on, but delighting most in travels, which set his 
imagination wild, as his own have kindled many a 
boy since ; and he had presentiments " amounting 
to positive belief " that he should one day visit the 
cities of the Pld World that he read of. So he 
made ideal journeys, and at about fifteen he learned 
French and Spanish, which came into use a few 
years later. He tells in one of his sketches how 
when he was in Spain (it was fourteen years after- 
wards) he could not speak the language, but after 
desperate efforts to recover it : 

Like Mrs. Dombey with her pain, I felt as if there were 
Spanish words somewhere in the room, but I could not pos- 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 



145 



ftively say that I had them. . . I had taken a carriage 
for Valldemosa, after a long talk with the proprietor, a most 
agreeable fellow, when I suddenly stopped, and exclaimed 
to myself, " You are talking Spanish, did you know it ? " 
It was even so ; as much of the language as I ever knew 
was suddenly and unaccountably restored to me. 

This is but a single instance of the remarkable 
way he had all his life of packing things away in 
his mind, which he was always sure of finding when 
he wanted them. 

His memory was prodigious, and he would store 
up materials for future use on some poem he had 
planned and leave them till the right time came 
for them to be brought forth. 

He taught school, wrote poetry, learned the 
printer's trade, and at nineteen began the realiza- 
tion of his early dreams by going to Europe, having 
a small sum of money advanced for letters he was 
to write home for publication. It was a wonderful 
thing to do, and so his countrymen thought, and 
when after two years he came back he found him- 
self the hero of the hour. His first book of prose 
appeared in 1846 and had a great sale — Viezos 



146 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Afoot; or, Europe seen with Knapsack a?id Staff, 
Three years l^ter, when the discovery of gold in 
California created such an excitement he was sent 
out to write letters for the iV^Z£/ York Tribune; and, 
notwithstanding so much has since been written 
concerning that period, you will probably nowhere 
else find so accurate a portraiture of the California 
of '49, and life in the gold diggings as his, taken 
freshly on the spot, when everything was novel, 
and a phase of crude, lawless, struggling, frantic 
life was seen such as will never be witnessed 
within our borders again. He was all aglow with 
his subject, and those letters are among the most 
spirited he ever wrote. He minded nothing about 
discomforts and hindrances ; even over the dread- 
ful journey across the Isthmus which was a terror 
to emigrants, he says, *' I feel fresh enough to turn 
about and make the trip over again." The scenery 
of California, the mountain ranges, the deep val- 
leys, the magnificent proportions of the scattered 
trees, delighted his eye and touched his poetic im- 
agination ; and numerous are the passages express- 
ive of his enthusiasm, like this : 



BAYARD TAYLOR. I 47 

The broad oval valleys, shaded by magnificent oaks, and 
enclosed by the lofty mountains of the Coast Range, open 
beyond each other like a suite of palace chambers, each 
charming more than the last. 

He spent five months in the midst of that rough, 
half-savage life, and says : 

I lived almost entirely in the open air, sleeping on the 
ground, with my saddle for a pillow, and sharing the hard- 
ships of the gold-diggers, without taking part in their labors. 

In a private letter, he writes in this rapturous 
way : 

" It is so delicious to fall asleep with the stars 
above you — to feel their rays, the last thing, glim- 
mering in your hazy consciousness. . . one 
night . . I slept, or rather watched, all alone 
on the top of a mountain with vast plains glim- 
mering in the moonlight below me, and the wolves 
howling far down the ravines. Was it not a glo- 
rious night ? " 

This record of travel was put into book form in 
1850, under the leading title of El Dorado^ or Ad' 
ventures in the Path of Empire. 



148 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

His next long journey was to the East, whither 
he set his face in 185 1 ; and there he went to what 
he called the "farther East," to India, where, char- 
acteristic of the child who wished to climb high 
and see off, he persisted, though he had scant time, 
in going to the highest point in the Himalayas 
which could be reached in the winter season ; came 
home after two years' absence ; and three books 
were the result : A Journey to Central Africa, 1854, 
The Lands of the Saracens, 1854, A Visit to India, 
China and Japan, 1855. 

Just as before, he adapted himself to circum- 
stances and climate. When on the Nile, he says : 

Every day opens with z. jubilate, and closes with a thanks- 
giving. If such a balm and blessing as this life has been to 
me, thus far, can be felt twice in one's existence, there must . 
be another Nile somewhere in the world. . . A portion 
of the old Egyptian repose seems to be infused in our na- 
tures, and lately when I saw my face in a mirror, I thought I 
saw in its features something of the patience and resignation 
of the Sphinx. 

The Southern letters are rich in coloring and 
steeped in sunshine, but for spirit, freshness and 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 1 49 

vigor they cannot compare with those from the 
North of Europe, where he went in 1856, publish- 
ing in the year following a volume called Northern 
Travel: Summer and Whiter Pictures of Sweden, 
Denmark and Lapland. 

I wish I could quote liberally from his account 
of the Thuringian Forest, and tell you how he and 
his friends went four miles deep into it and supped 
with the forester, how they piled on the logs " un- 
til the flames rose high and red and snapped in the 
frosty wind," and one of the forester's men "went 
into the wood for green fir-boughs, which crackled 
resinously and sent up clouds of brilliant sparks," 
and by the light of the flashing, sparkling, fragrant 
firwood they ate the royal meal of sausages and 
potatoes cooked over the coals there in the open 
air. It is like Robin Hood and his merry men in 
the greenwood. 

He was determined to see the Polar day with- 
out a sun, and about the middle of January, he 
started from Stockholm, without having been able 
to find a man who had ever been up there in win- 
ter, or one who could tell him what to expect or 



150 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

what to do. Nothing daunted he set out and was 
gone two months, during which he travelled " nearly 
twenty-two hundred miles, two hundred and fifty of 
them by reindeer, and nearly five hundred within 
the Arctic Circle." Away up at Kantokeino he had 
his heart's desire, and saw at half-past eleven a red 
light almost as if the sun was coming up, but a few- 
minutes after high noon it began to fade, and he 
records that at last, once in his life, he had seen 
the day which had no sun. 

He made such close acquaintance with the 
Aurora Borealis that he felt he was almost touched 
by the marvellous presence ; he says it changed 

and fell in a broad luminous curtain straight downward 
through the air until its fringed hem swung apparently but 
a few yards over our heads. This phenomena was so un- 
expected and startling that for a moment I thought our 
faces would be touched by the skirts of this glorious auroral 
drapery. . . . Anything so strange, so capricious, so 
wonderful, so gloriously beautiful, I scarcely hope to see 
again. 

That he was not much charmed by reindeer 
travel, you can judge : 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 15I 

Nothing can exceed the coolness with which your deer 
jumps off the track, slackens his tow-rope, turns around and 
looks you in the face, as much as to say " what are you go- 
ing to do about it ? " . . This is particularly pleasant on 
the marshy table-lands of Lapland, where if he takes a no- 
tion to bolt with you, your pulkha bounces over the hard tus- 
socks, sheers sideways down the sudden pitches, or swamps 
itself in beds of loose snow. Harness a frisky sturgeon to 
a " dug-out " in a rough sea, and you will have some idea of 
this method of travelling. While I acknowledge the Provi- 
dential disposition of things which has given the reindeer to 
the Lapp, I cannot avoid thanking Heaven that I am not a 
Lapp, and that I shall never travel again with reindeer. 

After seeing Lapps, Finns and Northlanders he 
was glad to get back to Germany ; and after the 
polar twilight it rejoiced his eyes to see a blue sky 
and the sun riding high in the heavens, " like a 
strong, healthy sun again." As he left those North- 
ern solitudes, he writes : 

Not the table-land of Pamir in Thibet, the cradle of the 
Oxus and the Indus, but this lower Lapland terrace is en- 
titled to the designation of the " Roof of the World." We 
were on the summit, creeping along the mountain rafters 
and looking southward over her shelving eaves. . . Here 



152 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

for once, we seemed to look down on the horizon, and I 
thought of Europe and the Tropics as lying below. Our 
journey north had been an ascent, but now the world's steep 
sloped downward before us into sunshine and warm air. 

He was indeed a child of the sun. Many a pas- 
sage like these might be selected from his letters 
or diaries : 

I feel strongest and happiest when I am where the sun 
can blaze upon me. . . I am a worshipper of the sun. 
I took off my hat to him. . and let him blaze away in 
my face for a quarter of an hour. . . The Parsees wor- 
ship the sun, as the greatest visible manifestation of the 
Deity; and I assure you I have felt very much inclined to 
do the same , when he and I were alone in the desert. 

He was sensitive, " thin skinned," as he said, and 
once he wrote to a friend : *' Don't you know that 
slow moaning and crying of the wind, as if some- 
thing ached ? When it sounds that way I can't 
work. I long for friends ; I think of the blue 
Mediterranean ; I want to be an angel, and with 
the angels stand — or something else to keep me 
from sympathizing with all out-of-doors." 

But such moods were rare. He was one of the 



BAYARD TAYLOR. I 53 

most tireless of workers, never willing to stop to 
take rest, and he died in his prime, of over-work. 
His brain was always full of plans, which he carried 
along till the time came to give them shape, and he 
could have a novel and a long poem in hand, writ- 
ing every day on both, " prose by daylight, and 
poetry by night ! a new tandem, which I never 
drove before, but it goes smoothly and well." 
Whatever he undertook he attacked vigorously, 
and held to it, no matter what the hindrances, till 
it was done ; and always there stayed by him the 
conviction that presently he should do something 
better ; that with his enlarged experience and men- 
tal discipline he should do himself justice and 
reach that ideal which was always advancing as he 
went on, keeping a little way before him, but just 
near enough to allure and encourage. 

It is with renewed reverence for the great, loyal, 
tender and sweet nature of Bayard Taylor that one 
reads such sentences as these : 

The soul must sometimes sweat blood. Nothing great is 
achieved without the severest discipline of heart and mind ; 
nothing is well done that is done easily. 



154 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

My ruling passion as an author, is to do something better 

— to overcome, by hard work and honest study, the disad- 
vantages of early sentimentality and shallowness. 

Mere grace of phrase, surface brilliancy, simulated fire, 
cannot endure : we must build of hewn blocks from the ever- 
lasting quarries. 

There is not space to do more than indicate the 
different kinds of work he engaged in ; he was edi- 
tor, newspaper correspondent, lecturer, translator, 
writer of books of travel, poems, novels and dramas. 
His translation of Faust — an arduous undertaking 

— is pronounced a master-piece, the best in verse 
in the English language. He succeeded in more 
departments than any other man of letters in this 
country ; and no other ever labored so incessantly 
accomplishing so much in the same time. His first 
book (poetry) was published when he was nineteen, 
and he died at fifty-three ; in those intervening 
thirty-four years he had written no less than 
thirty-seven volumes. 

I have directed your attention to his books of 
travel almost to the exclusion of the others, for 
reasons which you will understand, and because an 



BAYARD TAYIOR, 155 

interest in such adventures is to be encouraged ; 
everything that enlarges the boundaries of your 
thought, while giving you a pure and healthful 
pleasure and an added zest to life, is worth know- 
ing, is worth reading ; and, though I have told you 
nothing new, perhaps you may be stimulated to a 
study of the peculiarities and scenes of other coun- 
tries. 

I wish I could dwell upon his love of animals, 
his love of home, and speak at length of his stories. 
It was always a great pleasure to him when he 
struck a new vein, as when the idea of writing a 
novel came to him; and he constructed the plot of 
Hannah Thurston^ and set to work enthusiastically, 
following it up eventually by three others. He 
also wrote shorter stories, depicting the gentle kind 
of life in his own Quaker neighborhood, with sweet, 
modest Quaker maidens, like Asenath in " Friend 
Elis' Daughter." Again he hit upon a happy 
thought in his " Home Ballads " or Pastorals start- 
ing off with " The Quaker Widow," which he said 
popped into his head one day, and with which he 
v/as as much pleased as a child with a new toy. 



156 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

His home feeling and local attachments were 
strong. Pennsylvania was the State of his birth, 
and had been the dwelling-place of his kin since 
the days of William Penn. He knew the men 
and women of his beloved Chester County and all 
their ways, so that those *' Pastorals " are warm 
and mellow with human love and experiences. 

Bayard Taylor was born at Kennett Square in 
that beautiful county, on January 11, 1825, and it 
was in that neighborhood more than thirty years 
later that he built his new home, Cedarcroft, the 
home of his dreams, just as he had long hoped to, 
just where his heart's desire was : 

But when I build a house, I thought, I shall build it upon 
the ridge, with a high steeple from the top of which I can 
see far and wide. 

And when at last he had it, he writes : 

While I live, I trust I shall have my trees, my peaceful, 
idyllic landscape, my free country life at least half the year ; 
and while I possess so much, with the ties out of which all 
this has grown, I shall own one hundred thousand shares in 
the Bank of Contentment. 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 157 

There he lived delightfully, most happily — the 
ideal life come true — for a time exercising mag- 
nificent hospitality, on a scale with his warm and 
generous nature, throwing wide his doors for 
guests who came at will, and it seemed as if the 
fairies who wait on the doers of good deeds had 
nothing but kindness in store for him. His rare 
qualities were appreciated by the friends who were 
drawn to him in no common degree, and who, 
while they loved him, admired the industry and 
patience by which he had accomplished so much 
— this self-educated, hard-working man who was 
abundantly entitled to all the praise he had won and 
the success he had achieved. 

But reverses came, and with them the necessity 
of change, increased toil of brain and production 
of books that should bring in money ; and a harass- 
ing, wearing anxiety beset him, though his fortitude 
and hope never failed. In 1878 he was sent as 
our minister to Germany — and such a send off ! 
He was banqueted by his literary associates, his 
German fellow-citizens made addresses, sung songs, 
and their bands played, and they nearly went wild 



158 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

over his appointment. No man ever went from his 
native land so cheered on and with such happy aug- 
uries as he. 

Just as everything was beginning to brighten, 
and he was preparing to settle to his official duties 
and a literary task he anticipated great pleasure in, 
he died at Berlin, on October 19 of that same year. 

The beautiful testimony of his friends was in 
newspapers all over the country, telling what a 
charm there was about him, how frank and sweet- 
tempered and generous he was, how true and 
honorable, how high his aims, what a delightful 
companion, how faithful in his attachment, how 
earnest in his work ; and poets who had loved 
him put their sorrow into verse. 

You will remember Longfellow's lines : 

Traveller ! in what realms afar, 
In what planet, in what star, 

In what vast aerial space 
Shines the light upon thy face ? 

In what gardens of delight 
Rest thy weary feet to-night ? 



BAYARD TAYLOR. I 59 

And the questioning of Aldrich : 

What unknown way is this that he has gone, 

Our Bayard, in such silence and alone ? 

What new, strange quest has tempted him once more 

To leave us ? 

Note. — He wrote Views Afoot ; or Europe seen with 
Knapsack and Staff ; El Dorado ; or Adventures in the Path 
of Empire ; A fourney to Central Africa ; The Lands of the 
Saracens ; A Visit to India, China and Japan ; A'orthern 
Travel ; Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark 
and Lapland ; Travels in Greece and Russia ; At Home and 
Abroad ; Colorado, a Summer Trip ; Byways of Europe ; 
Travels in Arabia ; Egypt and Icelattd (all of which you 
should read in connection with the Biography and in Chron- 
ological order) ; a book for young people called The Boys of 
other Countries ; a collection of stories entitled Beauty atid 
the Beast ; and Tales of Home ; also the four novels, Ha7tnah 
Thurston, John Godfrey's Eortunes, The Story of Kennett, 
Joseph and his Friend. The list includes also many volumes 
of poetry, drama, translation and compilations. The biog- 
raphy which has for title Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, 
edited by Marie Hansen-Taylor and Horace E. Scudder, is in 
two volumes, and of great interest. 




FENRY DAVID THOREAU. 



IX. 

HENRY DAVID THOREAU ; AND OTHER " OUT-OF- 
DOOR " WRITERS, 

THIS name stands for an odd kind of man 
and original writer. Thoreau has always 
been looked upon as one of the unique characters 
among American men of letters, (With what a 
half satiric smile he would have received that term 
" men-of-letters " as applied to himself ! ) It is 
said by those who do not admire him that he 
prided himself on doing things in a different way 
from common people ; while on the other hand, 
to those who take pains to understand him, the 
evidence seems conclusive that he could no more 
have helped being what he was than a partridge, 
or a fox, or any other creature of the wood can 
help acting according to the instincts it was born 
with. No one was ever like him, and perhaps no 
one would care to be. 



164 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

He has been over-rated, he has been disparaged. 
The matter that has been written about him, in 
the shape of criticisms, studies, biographies, is out 
of all porportion to his own writings all put to- 
gether, which proves him to be a person worthy 
of consideration ; and there is not much doubt 
that he will have a permanent place in American 
literature. 

Of the many authors who have made Concord, 
Massachusetts, so famous, Emerson, Hawthorne, 
Margaret Fuller, the Alcotts and others, he is the 
only one who was born there. To him Concord 
represented the whole universe, and was the only 
place worth living in. Like the man in Pollok's 
verse, he 

. . thought the visual line that girt him round, 
The world's extreme. 

That is, for all purposes needful for himself and 
his own culture ; and saving only the look out 
into the world beyond which he had in his college 
days at Harvard, and the trips he took to the 
Maine woods. Cape Cod, the West, and some 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 1 65 

Others, he had only, and wished only, Concord 
experiences. He thought he could find and learn 
everything there that was worth having or know- 
ing ; and by his insistency upon this point he 
gained a reputation for egotism and absurd exag- 
geration of the resources of that historic town. 

The Thoreaus were of several mixed races, 
which circumstance has been given as a reason 
for peculiar combination of qualities in this eccen- 
tric author. His great-grandmother was French, 
his grandmother Scotch, his mother a New Eng- 
lander, his grandfather a native of the Isle of 
Jersey. He inherited a certain kind of shrewd 
wisdom, independence and wit ; he had a keen 
way of looking at life, with a fair amount of every- 
day sense, a poetic taste and a quality of reti- 
cence, self-command and satisfaction with self 
which give a distinctive character to all his writ- 
ings. There were three other children, all tal- 
ented ; John, of whom he was very fond, Helen, 
and Sophia who died a few years since — the last 
of the Thoreau name in America with the excep- 
tion of one elderly maiden aunt. 



l66 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

After his college days were over, at twenty, 
Henry found it impossible to give himself up to 
any special trade or profession, though eventually 
his tastes led him to become a surveyor — one of 
the best, so that Emerson, speaking of the won- 
derful fitness of his body and mind, says, " He 
could pace sixteen rods more accurately than 
another man could measure them with rod and 
chain," and that he was held in the highest regard 
for his practical knowledge about lands and boun- 
daries. 

His first trip of interest was taken in company 
with his beloved brother ; and he put his obser- 
vations into a book (his first), A Week on the Con- 
cord and Merrimack Rivers, which had so poor a 
sale that he had most of the edition returned to 
him by the publishers; it was of this that he 
wrote in his diary the good-natured memoranda 
so often quoted, that he had a library of nine 
hundred volumes, " seven hundred of which I 
wrote myself." In spite of its lack of success, it 
is an attractive book, and though there have been 
so many accounts of boating trips since, his nar- 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 167 

rative is not out of date. He makes much of the 
starting, and of every slight adventure, according 
to his wont ; sees the hero in a very ordinary per- 
son, and great possibilities in the commonest life ; 
sees everything — nothing ever escapes his eyes 
— and he philosophizes and says things to set one 
thinking. , 

It was the same always, wherever he went. 
He was a student of Nature, of himself, and of a 
few choice authors. The pursuits and ambitions 
which engross most men he was more than indif- 
ferent to. Wealth, position, social influence were 
of no account to him. In his nature there was 
the Indian fondness for open-air life, and the 
sharp instincts and unerring sagacity of an Indian ; 
in knowledge of wood-craft few men in New Eng- 
land have surpassed him. He knew the ways 
and haunts, the times and seasons of the wild 
creatures in the woods and waters ; and to him 
they were never wild, but almost came at his bid- 
ding. One of his intimate friends says : 

" Sometimes I have gone with Thoreau and his 
young comrades for an expedition on the river. 



1 68 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

. . . He would tell stories of the Indians who 
once dwelt thereabout, until the children almost 
looked to see a red man skulking with his arrow 
on the shore ; and every plant or flower on the 
bank or in the water, and every fish, turtle, frog, 
lizard about us was transformed by the wand of 
his knowledge from the low form into which the 
spell of our ignorance had reduced it into a mys- 
tic beauty. One of his surprises was to thrust 
his hand softly into the water, and as softly raise 
up before our astonished eyes a large bright fish, 
which lay as contentedly in his hand as if they 
were old acquaintances. If the fish had also 
dropped a penny from its mouth, it could not 
have been a more miraculous proceeding to us." 
He did not use a gun, and never captured ani- 
mals except in gentle ways, and afterwards re- 
leased them. Squirrels would run up his arm, 
and the partridge, shyest of birds, would lead her 
brood to the door of his cabin in the woods. 
You should read a fine paper on Thoreau, by 
Emerson, who was his warm friend, to see how 
this quality of attracting dumb animals was exer- 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 1 69 

cised, as well as to see what estimate the poet- 
philosopher put upon his young townsman, the 
poet-naturalist. Much fuller, however, and more 
elaborate with regard to that trait in Thoreau's 
character is a volume with which you ought to be 
acquainted, called Thoreau : His Life and Aims. 
A Study. By H. A. Page, an Englishman. 

Everybody who has ever heard of Thoreau at all 
knows at least one thing about him, and that is 
that he had a hermitage by Walden Pond. It 
was about two miles from his mother's door, on 
Emerson's land, and Alcott and Channing helped 
cut down the trees of which the little house was 
made — a tiny building with just room enough 
for his few pieces of furniture, and none to spare, 
for whenever he had occasion to sweep and tidy 
up, he used to set everything out of doors. His 
life there was a sort of experiment, but he de- 
lighted in the freedom from conventional ways 
and in the seclusion, or he would never have tried 
it for two years. Often Emerson or some other 
choice friend would go to visit him, and they had 
many an hour of lofty converse about his favorite 



170 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

authors, Chaucer and Spenser, Homer and Virgil, 
Mihon and Wordsworth. 

It was a primitive way of living, but not exactly 
one's ideal to be followed for any length of time, 
however much one might be in love with Nature ; 
he varied his gardening in his little patch of 
ground with surveying, and taking long tramps 
to see the sun set from some hilltop, to search 
into the habits of some wild creature, to find 
some favorite flower and be on the spot at its 
time of blooming — foolish excursions most per- 
sons would call them, but to this keen observer, 
this ardent lover of bird and blossom, nothing 
was trivial or common. 

He was first of all a naturalist, and his life and 
work are of consequence as having given an im- 
pulse in that direction whose value and extent 
can hardly be over-rated ; but he was also a fine 
writer, careful and discriminating in the use of 
language, and imparting to all he wrote a kind 
of quaintness and originality which fitly represent 
his own unique personality. From association 
with Emerson he had caught an Emersonian tone 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 171 

which sometimes appears in a terse way of putting 
things, as in such passages as these : 

The outward is only the outside of that which is within. 
Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by 
them ; they are their true clothes. 

In the long run men hit only what they aim at. 

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance 
to read them at all. 

I shall not be as cheap to myself if I see that another 
values me. 

What a man does, compared with what he is, is but a 
small part. . . . Otte may well feel chagrined when he 
finds he can do nearly all he can conceive. 

Life is a battle in which you are to show your pluck, and 
woe be to the coward. . . . Men were born to succeed, 
not to fail. 

That sentence in italics is for you to think 
about in earnest. 

But in the main Thoreau is himself and no 
other. His prose is fragrant of the woods ; it 
carries you to the uplands and brings the air of 
the new dawn to your cheek ; you feel the morn- 
ing in all your veins ; the invigorating atmosphere 
of the mountain tops is about you ; for the time 



172 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

you are lifted up out of the pettiness of everyday 
living, and see how pure and sweet, how restful 
and helpful the sylvan influences and the skyey 
influences may be. You will, in time, grow to 
like the companionship of this writer, and while 
you pass over his oddities you will accept him 
as a guide through the woodlands and along the 
streams; and the more you observe, the more 
you will enjoy such bits of minute descriptions as 
you will find on almost every page, like the fol- 
lowing about the peeping of his favorite hylodes 
in March ; 

I hear it now faintly from through and over the bare gray 
twigs and the sheeny needles of an oak and pine wood, and 
from over the russet fields beyond. . . . It is a singu- 
larly emphatic and ear-piercing proclamation of animal life, 
when, with a very few and slight exceptions, vegetation is 
yet dormant. . . . The shrill piping of the hylodes 
locates itself nowhere in particular. It seems to take its 
rise at an indefinite distance over wood and hill and pasture, 
from clefts and hollows in the March wind. It is not so 
much of the earth, earthy, as of the air, airy. It rises at 
once on the wind and is at home there and we are incapable 
of tracing it further back. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 173 

Or what he says about the red squirrel, which 

makes so many queer sounds, and so different from one 
another, that you would think they came from half a dozen 
creatures. . . . You might say that he successfully ac- 
complished the difficult feat of singing and whistling at the 
same time. 

The chief teaching to be had from his writings 
is that there is unbounded wealth of happiness 
and a liberal education in using one's eyes. He 
says : 

The woman who sits in the house and sees is a match for 
a stirring captain. . . . We are as much as we see. 

This belief he expresses more fully, and in 
pungent words, in his fine paper on " Autumnal 
Tints." Often there is a dash of humor about 
him, like this : 

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to 
the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, 
and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a 
wood-shed with them. 

Or he follows out a grotesque fancy, as in this 
case : 



174 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS, 

The age of the world is great enough for our imagina- 
tions, even according to the Mosaic account, without bor- 
rowing any years from the geologist. From Adam and Eve 
at one leap sheer down to the deluge, and then through the 
ancient monarchies, through Babylon and Thebes, Brahma 
and Abraham, to Greece and the Argonauts ; whence we 
might start again, with Orpheus and the Trojan War, the 
Pyramids and the Olympic games, and Homer and Athens 
for our stages ; and after a breathing space at the building of 
Rome, continue our journey down through Odin and Christ 
to — America. It is a wearisome while, and yet the lives of 
but sixty old women such as live under the hill, say of a 
century each, strung together, are sufficient to reach over 
the whole ground. Taking hold of hands they would span 
the interval from Eve to my own mother. A respectable 
tea-party merely — whose gossip would be Universal His- 
tory. The fourth old woman from myself suckled Colum- 
bus — the ninth was nurse to the Norman Conqueror — the 
nineteenth was the Virgin Mary — the twenty-fourth the Cu- 
maean Sibyl — the thirtieth was at the Trojan War and Helen 
her name — the thirty-eighth was Queen Semiramis — the 
sixtieth was Eve the mother of mankind. So much for the 

Old woman that lives under the hill, 
And if she's not gone she lives there still. 

It will not take many great-granddaughters of hers to be in 
at the death of time. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 1 75 

But a few selections do not in any sense repre- 
sent Thoreau. His books are all worth careful 
reading. No one has given a better account of 
Cape Cod than he, and if you should ever happen 
to be in that strange region of downs and wind- 
swept spaces at Truro, and where the Highland 
Light-house stands solitary above a lonely sea, 
you will find in his little volume the truest, most 
appreciative guide you could have. His Waldeti 
has become a kind of classic, and by that he is 
most widely known. 

Thoreau does not seem to belong to our every- 
day world, but away ba,ck among sylvan folk of 
the days of fable, and that is how Hawthorne 
regarded him, for he says he drew his first con- 
ception of Donatello (in The Marble Faun), from 
him. But with all his eccentricity and egotism, 
there is one emulative thing to be said of him — 
he lived his own life, he was honest, without sham, 
and while clinging to his own ideas he did not 
consciously violate those of other men. 

His last days were spent in careful revision of 
his writings ; a friend who visited him says he 



176 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOITNG FOLKS. 

found him lying back in an easy chair, his mother 
standing behind him bathing his head, and Sophia 
on one side with a pile of manuscript which, 
measuring with his hand, he would now and then 
feebly make a suggestion about. His mother 
said> " Henry wished everything of a light charac- 
ter removed from his writings — he thinks life too 
serious for anything trifling." Death came to him 
in the Concord home he was so fond of, and his 
grave is in Sleepy Hollow, marked with a brown 
stone in which is a sunken panel with the inscrip- 
tion : "Henry D. Thoreau, born July 12, 1817; 
died May 6, 1862." The Walden hut is gone, but 
arrowy pines still shelter the place, the little clear- 
ing is open towards the lovely pond, and a cross 
set in the midst of a heap of stones marks the 
site where Thoreau lived — a pathetic cairn to 
which the chance passer-by, or visitor from afar, 
adds the tribute of a memorial stone. 

Nothing in recent American literature has been 
more remarkable than the increase of writings on 
the class of subjects in which Thoreau was pio- 
neer. One of the first (whom there is danger of 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 1 77 

your overlooking, since new writers are crowding 
along so fast), was Wilson Flagg, who was born 
in Beverly, Massachusetts, November 5, 1805, and 
died in Cambridge, May 4, 1878. His first book, 
Studies in the Field and Forest, was published in 
1857. He afterwards published Woods and By- 
ways of New England, and . Birds and Seasons of 
New England — three volumes with tempting titles, 
and contents which did not disappoint their prom- 
ise. He made no claim to technical knowledge, 
but wrote because he loved the subjects ; in his 
own words : " My book differs from learned works 
as a lover's description of his lady's hand would 
differ from Bell's anatomical description of it." 
One fancies him a small, slender man, taking long 
walks about the country, along the old roads and 
grassy cart-paths through the woods which he has 
pictured for us, sauntering rather than keeping on 
like your true pedestrian, lingering often to de- 
light his eye in some scene of rural beauty, or to 
watch the movements of some bird and listen to 
its song, then going home to write in poetical 
prose his pleasant experiences. 



178 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

So, one after another, the lovers of sylvan life 
have taken up the pen from pure delight in their 
favorite theme. Thirty years or more ago Colonel 
Higginson wrote those Out of Door Papers^ which 
" H. H." thought were in the most perfect style 
the English language is capable of. But, in her 
modest unconsciousness of her own matchless 
gift of expression, she could not have foreseen 
what the readers who sorrow over her death are 
keenly mindful of — that for prose which should 
exceed in force and beauty that which she herself 
wrote, we should have far to seek. Read her Bits 
of Travel and her Bits of Travel about Home for 
some of the choicest paragraphs that can any- 
where be found. Here, for instance, is the past- 
ture we know as we know our own door-yard — 
so faithfully can the master-hand paint a typical 
" bit " of New England territory : 

Considered as pastures, from an animal's point of view 
they must be disappointing ; stones for bread to a cruel ex- 
tent they give. Considered as landscape, they have, to a 
trained eye, a charm and fascination which smooth, fulsome 
meadow levels cannot equal. There can be no more ex- 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 179 

quisite tones of color, no daintier mosaic, than one sees if 
he looks attentively on an August day at these fields of gray 
granite, lichen-painted boulders, lying in beds of light-green 
ferns bordered by pink and white spiraeas, and lighted up by 
red lilies. 

Could anything surpass that ? From just such 
beds of fern have you not drawn forth long stems 
of luscious strawberries, and just such red lilies 
have you not borne away in sheaves ? 

Not a word of the descriptions of natural scen- 
ery, outward life, written by " H. H." can you 
afford to skip ; not an essay or passage of the 
kind by Miss Jewett can you afford not to read. 
You will be interested in seeing how different the 
style of two or three writers on the same subject 
(yet sometimes how similar!) as in the case of 
Thoreau who wrote about the Maine woods, and 
Theodore Winthrop, who in a series called Life in 
the Open Air, wrote of the same region. You 
might compare also two passages about a mount- 
ain, or, for another topic, see how Winthrop treats 
a loon and its uncanny cry, see what Thoreau has 
to tell, and then what John Burroughs says about 



l8o PLEASANT AUTHOTiS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

the same thing — you will find it in "Touches of 
Nature," in his Birds and Poets. 

Of this last-named writer, now in the prime and 
fulness of his power, you surely know a great deal, 
for his essays are all about you, and appearing in 
the magazines of the day. What more attractive 
reading than his Wake Robin, Winter Sunshine, 
Birds and Poets, Locusts and Wild Honey, Pepacton, 
and Fresh Fields ? A virile, crisp, breezy writer, 
whose pages lose nothing in picturesqueness when 
compared with any American author. The pa- 
pers in those volumes are enough to kindle in 
you an ardent interest in the subject we have 
been dwelling upon, even if you had not the faint- 
est inclination that way before. 

It would require far wider limits than are al- 
lowed me here to speak of all the authors who 
have made this theme an attractive one in our 
literature. Lowell has charming papers among 
his few volumes of prose, such as " My Garden 
Acquaintance," and others you will find no diffi- 
culty in selecting. Susan Fenimore Cooper (daugh- 
ter of the great novelist) wrote more than thirty 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU. l8l 

years ago a record of the sylvan year, which she 
called Rural Hours. Celia Thaxter described in 
her Among the Isles of Shoals- all the phases of 
flower life, and the wild characteristics of those 
bleak but most fascinating islands ofif the New 
Hampshire coast — a book which it is a joy to 
read, autobiographic, descriptive, brimming over 
with poetic thought. 

Such a library of out-of-door literature by our 
own countrymen and countrywomen, and about 
different sections of our own country, as one might 
have ! A summer corner, where we should seem 
transported to the cool, green solitudes of woods 
far inland, to glens among the mountains, to 
beaches lapped by ocean waves. The tonic of 
the hills and the sea is in them, the invigorating 
freshness of the west winds, the song of birds, the 
sound of waters, the incense of flowers. You 
would find in that nook some choice papers by 
Joel Benton, which he meant to put into a book 
to be called Under the Apple Boughs (perhaps he 
has done so) ; a volume or more by Maurice 
Thompson, By-ways and Bird Notes, for one ; you 



l82 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

will find the classic pastorals (for such they must 
be termed, incongruous though it sound), of Edith 
Thomas ; the Adirondack sketches of Charles 
Dudley Warner; certain volumes by Ik Marvel 
(of which more by and by). How long the list 
might be made, not forgetting one lately pub- 
lished. Tenants of an old Farm, by Dr. McCook, 
with its comical adaptations by Dan Beard ; and, 
also new, A Naturalisf s Rambles about Home, and 
Uplatid and Meadow, both about that famous 
region for naturalists, the New Jersey creeks and 
barrens, both by Dr. Charles C. Abbott. Finally 
our magazines and our book stores abound with 
this class of literature, so that there is an embar- 
rassment of riches, from North, East, South and 
West, all in the same general line with Thoreau, 
but treated in as many ways as there are authors. 



Note. — Thoreau's prose books are A Week on the Con- 
cord and Merrimack Kivers, IValden, or Life in the Woods, 
A Yankee in Canada, Excursions in Field ajid Forest, The 
Maine Woods, Cape Cod, Early Spring in Massachusetts, 
and Slimmer. The two last named are selections from his 
journals, edited by IT. O. O. Blake. Two of the most at- 
tractive among his single papers, arc "Autumnal Tints" 
and " Wild Apples." There is a biography by Wm. E. Chan- 
ning, a " Life " by F. B. Sanborn, and " A Study " of his life 
and aims, by H. A. Page. 







FRANCIS PARKMAN. 



X. 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 



IN reading history, the intelligent and profitable 
way is to have some plan, and then follow it 
out. Select a certain period, and make yourself 
as thoroughly acquainted as possible with that; 
and for collateral reading, take biographies or other 
books bearing upon the times, individuals, leading 
events, or the country you are engaged upon; by 
doing which you may have the benefit of some 
side-lights upon your subject, and also the opinion 
of writers from some other point-of-view, helping 
you to form your own opinion. It is often the case 
that one reads history in a kind of hap-hazard way, 
now a little about England, now the Middle Ages, 
now Greece or Rome. The result is an accumula- 
tion of incidents and dates ; of a kind of informa- 
tion which is not knowledge. You have a confused 
185 



1 86 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

mass. in your mind which you cannot use, a cL—'^s, 
a miscellany ; even after much reading and study 
you are in deplorable uncertainty about the momen- 
tous causes which have brought about the very 
revolutions in government, dethronement of sover- 
eigns, overthrow of nations which you have just 
given your time to. It is a Ip-mentable failure 
to appreciate the chief aim for which history is 
written. 

Already you have had Prescott brought before 
you with his subjects of discovery, adventures and 
conquest. Another series is the splendid group 
which the genius of Motley made as captivating 
as romance, covering a period of portentous im- 
port to more than one of the great European pow- 
ers. Coming to our own United States, you have 
the general history by Hildreth, and that upon 
which the venerable and venerated George Ban- 
croft has been fifty years engaged ; besides the 
many local and topical works to aid in a clear 
knowledge of certain regions or subjects, such as 
Palfrey's History of Neiv England, and Frothing- 
ham's Siege of Boston. These men are our own his- 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 1 87 

torians, American authors, eminent for scholarship, 
for painstaking research. 

There is another who stands without a superior, 
second to no American historian living or dead ; 
second to no historian who has written in the Eng- 
lish tongue — Francis Parkman. 

' As early as the age of eighteen he formed the 
purpose of writing on " French-American history," 
limiting himself to the contest which ended with 
the death of Montcalm and Wolfe, the fall of Que- 
bec and of the French dominion in North Amer- 
ica. But afterwards he extended his plan so as to 
include the entire subject of French colonization ; 
and in carrying it out he arranged it in separate 
narratives with different titles. 

To-day, after forty-five years, it stands complete, 
with the exception of a comparatively unimportant 
portion of seven years, by and by to come into 
place ; and in his own words, " When this gap is 
filled, the series of ' France and England in North 
America' will form a continuous history of the 
French occupation of the continent." A series 
unsurpassed for brilliancy, for the quality of the 



165 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

literary workmanship, accuracy, scholarship and 
picturesque narrative. You can hardly know what 
a charm history may have until you have made 
yourself acquainted with these volumes ; in his 
hands it is like a story-book. 

His first movement in preparation was a trip to 
the Rocky Mountains for the purpose of studying 
savage life, customs and character among the wild- 
est tribes. With a friend, like himself just out of 
college, he set out from St. Louis in the April of 
1846 and, after various adventures, left him and 
went on with a hunter-guide and lived among the 
Sioux; sleeping in their wigwams, eating their 
detestable food, sharing all their hardships and rov- 
ing life, following the hunt and the war-path, wit- 
nessing their ceremonies ; in short he was domes- 
ticated for several weeks with a horde of the most 
thorough savages ; as utterly lost to civilization as 
if no such thing existed, and sometimes so ill that 
he expected to leave his bones there in Oregon. 
No white man, unless it might have been a fur 
trader, could have had better opportunity. His 
nerve and determination never failed ; he says he 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 1 89 

placed himself in positions so perilous because 
" my business was observation, and I was willing 
to pay dearly for the opportunity of exercising it." 
After his return his experiences were put into 
a book, The Oregon Trail, brim full of novel situa- 
tions, perils and escapes, buffalo-hunts in the region 
of the Black Hills, and all the hideous details of 
that savage kind of living. You will see just what 
Indians were at the Far West forty years ago. No 
such account could be written to-day, for that state 
of things has passed away forever. He went boldly 
to the lodge of an old chief, and had the guide an- 
nounce that he had come to live with him ; and as 
hospitality under such circumstances is an Indian 
virtue he became one of the family of Kongra 
Tonga. Here is a passage after the big buffalo 
hunt was over : 

I entered the lodge of my host. His squaw instantly 
brought me food and water, and spread a buffalo-robe for 
me to lie upon ; and being much fatigued I lay down and fell 
asleep. In about an hour, the entrance of Kongra Tonga, 
with his arms smeared with blood to the elbows, awoke 
me. . . His squaw gave him a vessel of water for wash- 
ing, set before him a bowl of boiled meat, and, as he was 



I go PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

eating, pulled off his bloody moccasins and placed fresh . 
ones on his feet. . . . And now the hunters, two or 
three at a time, came rapidly in and, each consigning his 
horses to the squaws, entered his lodge with the air of a 
man whose day's work was done. The squaws flung down 
the load from the burdened horses, and vast piles of meat 
and hides were soon gathered before the door of every lodge. 
By this time it was darkening fast, and the whole village was 
illumined by the glare of fires. All the squaws and children 
were gathered about the piles of meat, exploring them for 
the daintiest portion. 

An intimate, most trying, often sickening inside 
view of savage life and character which was after- 
ward of incalculable service to him. Thus, in the 
outset, you must understand that your historian is 
personally familiar with his ground ; that besides 
collecting material from foreign archives, from 
French manuscripts, documents and letters hith- 
erto inaccessible, from every possible quarter, he 
has journeyed through forests, been up and down 
the great rivers, along the lakes, visited the fields 
where battles were fought, examined the ruins of 
forts and old defences, taken note of the scenery 
and vegetable growths, and traversed what were 
once trails through the wilderness. He says : 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 19I 

I have visited and examined every spot where events of 
any importance in connection with the contest took place, 
and have observed with attention such scenes and persons 
as might help to illustrate those I meant to describe. In 
short, the subject has been studied as much from life and in 
the open air as at the library table. 

And now let me emphasize the importance of 
this magnificent work by reminding you that while 
so much interest is connected with the War of the 
Revolution and the late War of the Rebellion, there 
was danger that the momentous consequences in- 
volved in that earlier, great struggle between the 
French and English might be almost lost sight of. 

The general title is " France and England in 
North America, A series of historical narratives." 
The time covered is from 1512 (the discovery of 
Florida) to the fall of Canada, in 1760, with a sup- 
plementary chapter or two relative to the treaty 
and results. The scenes, personages, accessories 
and events during this period of about two hun- 
dred and fifty years are wonderfully varied and 
dramatic. The chief actors are French noblemen 
fresh from the most polished court in Europe, ofifi- 
cers victorious in famous European campaigns, 



1 92 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

explorers, Jesuit fathers, trappers, guides, half- 
breeds, Indian warriors, and in the ancient re'gime, 
nuns, high-born ladies and peasant girls. The 
region is romantic, taking in the coast at Mount 
Desert, and that wild stretch along the St. Law- 
rence and the chain of great lakes to the far 
Northwest, the Mississippi river and the fateful 
lagoons at its mouth. 

It has the Acadia of the people of Evangeline, 
Quebec with its heights and historic " Plain," Mon- 
treal and the convent whose walls were reared dur- 
ing the reign of that re'gime, Lake George, Cham- 
plain, Ticonderoga, the forts where diabolic savage* 
wreaked their vengeance, trading-posts, lonely mis- 
sions in the wilderness. The scenes s?iift, and suc- 
ceed one another like those in some long panorama; 
now a pageant or a religious ceremonial, now an 
ambuscade or a war-dance. Dramatic in the highest 
degree, it was life lived rapidly and insecurely, al- 
ternating from festivity to carnage ; a time of splen- 
did success and one of downfall, of glory, of triumph 
and of dire misfortune. Nowhere else on this con- 
tinent have been such varied and stirring events. 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. I93 

Part I. is Pioneers of Fra7ice in the New World, 
and the author introduces it by saying : 

The springs of American civilization, unlike those of the 
older world, lie revealed in the clear light of History. 

He says it was Feudalism, Monarchy and Rome 
— "a gigantic ambition striving to master a con- 
tinent" — which sent those foreign expeditions to 
our shore, and that " the story of New France 
opens with a tragedy, in the wilds of Florida." 
The first division of Part I. is " Huguenots in Flor- 
ida," and while reading it it is worth while to take 
up the chapters in the first volume of Bancroft's 
History of the United States which treat of the 
same subject, and also to give careful attention 
to a recent volume by Charles B. Reynolds, entitled 
Old Saint Augustine. The second division is " Sam- 
uel de Champlain," a far more agreeable topic, 
and a kind of adventurer more worthy than many 
who appear in those pages. Here is an account 
of an Ottawa village as his exploring party saw it ; 
they were the first white m.en the Indians had seen : 

Here was a rough clearing. The trees had been burned ; 
there was a rude m& .desolate gap in the sombre green of 



194 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

the pine forest. Dead trunks, blasted and black with fire, 
stood grimly upright amid the charred stumps and prostrate 
bodies of fallen comrades half consumed. In the interven- 
ing spaces the soil had been feebly scratched with hoes of 
wood or bone, and a crop of maize was growing, now some 
four inches high. The dwellings of these slovenly farmers, 
framed of poles covered with sheets of 'bark, were scattered 
here and there, singly or in groups, while their tenants were 
running to the shore in amazement. Warriors stood with 
their hands over their mouths — the usual attitude of aston- 
ishment ; squaws stared between curiosity and fear ; and 
naked pappooses screamed and ran. 

This was the first intrusion upon wigwams in 
the "forest primeval," and here the red man as he 
was, the aboriginal inhabitant, the North American 
Indian who was to play so important a part in 
coming events. • 

Part II. is The Jesuits in North America, and is a 
history of the efforts, perseverance, zeal and hard- 
ships of the priests in establishing Missions among 
the Indians. No annals afford a picture of more 
sublime patience and self-sacrifice than the lives 
of those men, who were more than ready to shut 
themselves off in the heart of the wilderness, to be 
massacred, burnt at the stake, by their savage as- 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. I95 

sociates, and perish there alone, as was the fate of 
many. 

But their religious enthusiasm had results com- 
mensurate with their heroism, and its influence 
was of weight in founding Montreal and determin- 
ing the site of towns which perpetuate their names 
to this day. 

Part III., La Salle and the Discovery of the Great 
JVest, you will find one of the most captivating of 
the series. A biography of one of the most daring 
of all the explorers in an age of daring men ; one 
whom no perils could daunt, a man of unconquer- 
able mind "in a frame of iron" — that educated 
young French gentleman who came over to Can- 
ada at twenty-two to seek his fortune, learned 
seven or eight Indian languages and dialects, and 
with his imagination on fire to find a new passage 
to the South Sea by way of the Ohio and Missis- 
sippi, lent his life to "exploring the mystery of the 
great unknown river of the West." Of the perils 
and tragic experiences through the years that fol- 
lowed, through wintry forests, beset by savage 
hordes, we have his own words : 



196 PLEASANT AUTHORS F _)R YOUNG FOLKS. 

Often without food ; watch by night and march by day, 
loaded with baggage, such as blanket, clothing, kettle, 
hatchet, gun, powder, lead, and skins to make moccasins; 
sometimes pushing through thickets, sometimes climbing 
rocks covered with snow, sometimes wading whole days 
through marshes where the water was waist-deep or even 
more, at a season when the snow was not entirely melted. 

Again, when snow kept on falling for nineteen 
days in succession, he says : 

We were obliged to cross forty leagues of open country, 
where we could hardly find wood to warm ourselves at even- 
ing, and could get no bark whatever to make a hut, so that 
we had to spend the night exposed to the furious winds that 
blow over those plains. 

Through regions where there had been Indian 
fights, and sights most sickening after that " hyena 
warfare " met their sight ; losing vessels and boats ; 
encountering the murderous savages; amidst plun- 
derers and mutineers; subject to every hindrance 
conceivable — to understand all this, you must read 
this strangely fascinating but saddening volume 
which closes with loss and disappointment, with 
tragedy, and the assassination of the brave leader 
at forty-four. 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 197 

Part IV., The Old Regime in Canada^ is a more 
peaceful division treating of the mode of life in 
Montreal and other settlements, the arrival of the 
emigrant girls from France, the establishment of 
the Sisterhoods still existing in that quaint Cana- 
dian city, building, mission work, intrigues, dissen- 
sions, the rude conditions of a new colony with a 
promiscuous population. 

Part v.. Count Frontenac and New France under 
Louis XIV., gives the history of " the most remark- 
able man who ever represented the crown of France 
in the New World," and the beginning of the trou- 
bles between the French and the English colonies 
which grew into that long and bloody contest, 
during which bands of Indian allies swept down 
through the wilderness upon our defenceless set- 
tlements, and along our northern frontiers there 
was an unbroken reign of terror. It is in this part 
(Chapter XVI.) that you come upon the Acadians 
of whom you are to know more by and by. 

As was said in the beginning, there is a vacancy 
in the series, which leaves us to pass on to the 
grand culmination in Part VII., Montcalm and 



198 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

IVo/fe, one of the finest pieces of historical writing 
in our language. In this the author has surpassed 
all the preceding volumes. In the Introduction 
he says : 

The most momentous and far-reaching question ever 
brought to issue on this continent was : Shall France 
remain here, or shall she not ? 

This work tells why and how French dominion 
was overthrown ; and first, with clearness of state- 
ment that a child could understand, shows the 
situation, what France claimed, and what she 
actually held ; then the position and conditions of 
the thirteen British colonies at the period dating 
1745 ; then the struggles between the French and 
English for trading-posts : and here at one of the 
French forts commanded by Saint Pierre, we meet, 
in the autumn of 1753, George Washington: 

The surrounding forests had dropped their leaves, and in 
gray and patient desolation bided the coming winter. Chill 
rains drizzled over the gloomy " clearing," and drenched the 
palisades and log-built barracks, raw from the axe. Buried 
in the wilderness, the military exiles resigned themselves as 
they might to months of monotonous solitude, when, just 
after sunset on the eleventh of December, a tall youth came 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 1 99 

out of the forest on horseback, attended by a companion 
much older and rougher than himself, and followed by sev- 
eral Indians and four or five white men with pack horses. 
Officers from the fort went out to meet the strangers ; and 
wading through mud and sodden snow, they entered at the 
gate. On the next day the young leader of the party, with 
the help of an interpreter, for he spoke no French, had an 
interview with the commandant, and gave him a letter 
from Governor Dinwiddle. Saint Pierre and the officer 
next in rank, who knew a little English, took it to another 
room, to study it at their ease ; and in it, all unconsciously, 
they read a name destined to stand one of the noblest in the 
annals of mankind ; for it introduced Major George Wash- 
ington, Adjutant General of the Virginia militia. 

I have quoted that passage for a twofold pur- 
pose, one of which is to show you the unsurpassed 
clearness and picturesque beauty of this author's 
style. In the whole paragraph it hardly would be 
possible to change a word, or the position of a 
word, without damage. It is a style wonderful in 
its simplicity and purity, its directness and vigor, 
its pictorial charm. You will find it everywhere. 
In no historical writings will you have the reality 
of events more vividly brought before 3'ou ; the 
author had the power of identifying himself with 
them, as if he had traversed the swamps with La 



200 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Salle, and lived in the bark-roofed cabin with the 
priest ; as if he had been an eye-witness of Brad- 
dock's defeat. When you read that bloody story 
in Chapter VII. you will feel as if you yourself had 
been a looker-on. 

In this part, you have the true story of the Aca- 
dians (dififerent from that in Evangeline) ; you 
see of what rude elements the Provincial army was 
made ; you meet John Stark and Rogers " the 
Ranger ; " you feel afresh the horrors of the sav- 
age raids ; you live in terror of ambuscades ; you 
wait in suspense to learn the fate of the frontier 
forts and their brave defenders. Last of all these 
intensely dramatic scenes, you witness the desper- 
ate attempts to gain the Heights of Quebec, you 
see the plateau of grass patched with corn fields, 
the Plains of Abraham, where the long, long strug- 
gle between England and France for American 
dominion came to its final issue, where Wolfe fell 
and Montcalm received his death-shot. 

Our author loves a hero ; he delights to portray 
a character ; to picture the man, bringing him out 
of the past and making him alive before us. He 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 20I 

has done this for the two brave officers who gave 
the title to this, his crowning work. 

He has done it, too, for an Indian chief, who is 
the subject of another volume, which, though stand- 
ing independently and written earlier than the 
others may be said to belong here — The Conspiracy 
of Pontiac. Though small space remains, let me 
say that the introductory part is a careful account 
of the social institutions and habits, and the tribal 
relations of the North American Indians. Prob- 
ably in no one volume will you find so much, put 
in so concise and attractive shape — their order of 
tribes, councils, plan of government, what the iotcm 
meant, their ancient transmitted customs which 
took the place of laws. 

The main theme is the gathering of all the In- 
dians into one great confederacy to strike for their 
lost territory ; and the aspect of the country when 
this is about to take place is sketched — the lone- 
liness, the scattered Indian villages ; even in the 
most populous portion " one might sometimes 
journey for days together through the twilight 
forest and meet no human form ; " the English 



202 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

settlements lay "like a narrow strip between the 
wilderness and the sea," with places of rendezvous 
and outposts. 

Pontiac, at the head of the confederacy, a man 
of remarkable foresight and power over his people, 
enters upon the scene at about fifty, in 1760, when 
Rogers the Ranger with his men was sent to the 
western forts to take possession in the nam.e of His 
Britanic Majesty. Pontiac, who had been an ally 
of the French, demands to know why they are there. 

Soon begins the murderous strife, which means 
attack upon the forts, stratagems, ambuscades, 
every diabolic measure that savages could resort 
to — it is a bloody, a curdling story, of which we 
have details even to the preparation where the 
Indians put on the war-paint. Through it all, we 
cannot help sharing the author's admiration for 
the man whom he calls "the greatest Indian on 
the American continent." Pontiac was assassin- 
ated by a strolling Indian, but, says the historian, 

whole tribes were rooted out to expiate it . . . over the 
grave of Pontiac more blood was poured out in atonement 
than flowed from the hecatomb of slaughtered heroes on the 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 203 

corpse of Patroclus. . . . Neither mound nor tablet 
marked the burial place of Pontiac. For a mausoleum, a 
city [St. Louis] has risen above the forest hero, and the race 
whom he hated with such burning rancor trample with un- 
ceasing footsteps over his forgotten grave. 

I hope I have been able to indicate to you that 
vast pleasure and profit await you in reading the 
works of this historian, and that you will be 
tempted to avail yourself of the whole series. 
Great enjoyment is before you. 

Francis Parkman was born in Boston, September 
16, 1823, and in these later years his time is 
chiefly spent there and at his summer home a few 
miles out, by Jamaica Pond, where he indulges 
himself in his favorite pastime of horticulture, and 
may be found of a summer day at work among his 
beloved roses and lilies — you will notice how flow- 
ers bloom along the pages of his books — of which 
he is so fond and for the cultivation of which he is 
so distinguished that he has written a " Book of 
Roses," and had a lily named for him, Lilium 
Parkmanni. 



Note. — His books are Pioneers of France in the New 
World, The Jesuits in North America, La Salle and the Dis- 



204 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

co7'ery of the Great West, The Old Regime in Canada, Count 
Frontenac and New Fra7tcc under Louis XIV., Montcalm and 

Wolfe, The Oregon Trail, The Conspiracy of Pontiac. He 
has lately prepared a Historic Handbook of the Northern 

Tour. A short sketch of his life may be found in The Critic 
of February 27, 18S6. In connection with the Acadian epi- 
sode you will find it of interest to read Evangeline ; and 
Hiawatha, and the Algonquin Legends of Charles G. Leland 
may afford help in understanding Indian customs and tradi- 
tions. It is also well to read what Bancroft says upon these 
topics. 



4':!0''^ 







GRORGE WILHAM CURTIS. 



XI. 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 



INFINITE variety goes to the making of litera- 
ture, and we-^duld not have it otherwise if 
we could. We do not want all, or much, to be 
of the sledge-hammer style of Carlyle ; we weary of 
the ponderous sentences of Dr. Johnson, even of 
the elegant finish of Addison. It would not be 
satisfactory to have all writers rambling and remi- 
niscent like De Quincey and Ruskin, notwithstand- 
ing their wondrous affluence of words, their sug- 
gestiveness, their picturesqueness and charm. We 
tire too much of the stately and statuesque, of the 
too highly elaborated, of the abrupt and brusque, 
of too much piquancy or too much dash. 

We must not read history only, or biography, 
or dry essays on vital subjects to the exclusion of 
everything else. What would life be with the 
207 



2o8 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

poetry eliminated from it ? Let us have our ideals, 
only they must be high ones ; let us sometimes — 
not too often — dream dreams, even as the old 
book-keeper did in Prue and /, provided they 
make us gentler, tenderer, purer, kindlier. 

Take away from literature the poetic and imagi- 
native part, and what a dreary residue it would be ! 
Take away the beings who have had no existence 
but in the author's brain, and what wide, what 
awfully wide gaps there would be ! The favorites 
of your childhood would be the first to go. You 
would lose your fairy princes and princesses, Cin- 
derella, and the Mother Goose people of your ear- 
liest remembrance. As with the waving of a con- 
jurer's wand, away, away they go ; as swiftly and 
as noiselessly as the fairies who had been dancing 
on the sands by moonlight, in Allston's lovely 
sketch. Robinson Crusoe would go; and the 
Pilgrim to the Celestial City and all he had to do 
with. Prospero and Ariel would be no more ; 
Oberon and Titania and Robin Good-fellow would 
be spirited away. 

Are you acquainted with the " Howadji ? " Do 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 209 

you know " Prue " and the book-keeper ? Have 
you ever mused over the unfortunate possession 
Titbottom had in his magic spectacles ? — spec- 
tacles with the power of magic that was malign, 
not beneficent. If so, you know the quality of 
this author's prose, unlike anything you have yet 
had brought before you. There is always the 
same individual imprint in whatever his pen 
touches. You see it month by month, in the Easy 
Chair of Harper's Monthly — a little dreamy, full 
of memories with a flavor of pensiveness that you 
are conscious of, as you are of a delicate perfume. 
In the perfection of finish, the elegance and re- 
finement of language, there is a hint of Irving ; 
and there is a something, not easily defined, which 
is a reminder of Charles Lamb. And yet, Curtis 
is like neither. 

If you would know for yourself just what it is 
that I find such difficulty in defining, put yourself 
under the spell, and read Frue and /, one of the 
most engaging of modern classics, a little volume 
made up of seven short sketches. What makes 
the charm ? There is no story, no grand march 



2IO PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

of syllables, no incisive statement, no crystallized 
thought to compel your attention. Yes ; where 
lies the charm ? You have it the same in the 
Howadji books of travel. 

It is the daintiest of poetic prose. It is not the 
bread of life, but a choice conserve. You do not 
care to have all quince or all pine-apple, but vi^hen 
you spread your table you would not forego the 
exquisite aroma and the delicious flavor which 
give zest to your banquet. When you have our 
author for your guide you find yourself in the 
realm of fancy, and for the time being you walk 
in the glamour that it casts over common things. 
Too much of such prose would be enervating, like 
soft airs, floating clouds, the fragrance of flowers, 
the calm of summer seas. You do not find here 
the sinews and thews, the brawn and muscle of 
literature, but another and essential part, refine- 
ment, elegance, delicacy, quiet humor, something 
subtle and evasive ; what odor is to the tuberose, 
what poetry is to language. 

It is an ineffably lovely quality of the imagina- 
tion which conjures up pictures, like that in Elia's 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 211 

" Dream Children," in the seven sketches men- 
tioned. See how the gray-haired book-keeper in- 
dulges his fancies about his Spanish castles, in 
*• My Chateaux " : 

My finest castles are in Spain. It is a country famously 
romantic, and my castles are all of perfect proportions and 
appropriately set in the most picturesque situations. I have 
never been to Spain myself, but I have naturally conversed 
much with travellers to that country. . . . The wisest of 
them told me that there were more holders of real estate in 
Spain than in any region he had ever heard of, and they are 
all great proprietors. Every one of them possesses a mul- 
titude of the stateliest castles. . . . It is not easy to say 
how I know so much, as I certainly do about my castles in 
Spain. The sun always shines upon them. They stand 
lofty and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little hazy 
and dreamy perhaps, like the Indian summer. . . . All 
the sublime mountains, and beautiful valleys, and soft land- 
scapes that I have not yet seen are to be found in the 
grounds. . . . From the windows of those castles look 
the beautiful women whom I have never seen, whose por- 
traits the poets have painted. . . . The lights that never 
shone glance at evening in the vaulted halls upon banquets 
that were never spread. 

How delightful it would be if you could read in 



212 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

connection with this some of the poems in verse 
(for this, you know, is a poem in prose) where a 
similar fancy has taken form in words. Thus, 
Mrs. Browning called hers "The House of 
Clouds;" Tennyson dreamed of "The Lotos- 
Eaters," and " The Palace of Art ; " and in the 
poems of a writer on this side the ocean, " A. W. 
H." (Rose Terry Cooke), you will find a veritable 
Spanish Chateau, entitled " En Espagne," in per- 
fect verse, beginning : 

I built a palace white and high 
"With gold and purple tapestried. 

No dusty highway ran thereby, 
But guarded alleys to it led 
And shaven lawns about were spread 

Where bee and moth danced daintily. 

The old book-keeper of Curtis has the vision and 
the faculty divine ; he does not need to leave the 
room to see the world, for he says : 

An orange takes me to Sorrento, and roses when they 
blow to Paestnm. The camelias in Aurelia's hair bring 
Brazil into the happy room she treads. . . . The pearls 
upon her neck make me free of the Persian Gulf. Upon her 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 213 

shawl, like the Arabian prince upon his carpet, I am trans- 
ported to the valley of Cashmere, and thus as I daily walk 
in the bright spring days, I go round the world. 

He can sit upon the shore, and see in one ship 
Cleopatra's galley, Columbus' Santa Maria, the 
Bucentaur of the Adriatic, the Spanish Armada, 
the May Flower, and all the famous ships of his- 
tory, tradition and song. In " Sea from Shore " 
he lets the vessel from India take him far away. 
He says of his own resources : 

For those of us whom Nature means to keep at home she 
provides entertainment. One man goes four thousand 
miles to see Italy, and does not see it, he is so short-sighted. 
Another is so far-sighted that he stays in his room and sees 
more than Italy : 

which is his poetical way of telling us what writers 
before and since have said, and which you will 
apprehend for yourselves, if you are true observ- 
ers, that the eye sees only what it has in itself the 
power of seeing, but having power, sees wonder- 
ful and precious things hidden from other eyes 
that have it not. 

The seven sketches referred to are " Dinner 



214 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Time," " My Chateaux," " Sea from Shore," " Tit- 
bottom's Spectacles," " A Cruise in the Flying 
Dutchman," " Family Portraits," " Our Cousin 
the Curate ; " and if you fail to appreciate their 
beauty it is because your taste is not educated. 
Curtis's one novel Trump you will perhaps better 
like, written to show up the folly, shame and 
wickedness of society, after the Thackeray man- 
ner, with a spice of sarcasm, pungent and biting. 
There is a sweet, true, pure girl for a heroine, 
Hope Wayne, the primness of whose bringing up 
is intimated thus : 

So Hope as a child had played with little girls who were 
invited to Pinewood — select little girls, who came in the 
prettiest frocks and behaved in the prettiest way, superin- 
tended by nurses and ladies maids. They tended their 
dolls peaceably in the nursery ; they played clean little 
games upon the lawn. . . . They were not chattery 
French nurses who presided over these solemnities ; they 
were grave, housekeeping, Mrs. Simcoe-kind of people. Julia 
and Mary were exhorted to behave themselves like little 
ladies, and the frolic ended by their all taking books from 
the library shelves and settling properly in a large chair, or 
on the sofa, or even upon the piazza if it had been nicely 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 215 

dusted and inspected until the setting sun sent them away 
with the calmest kisses at parting. 

It was in the days of a genuine old-time min- 
ister, who wore 

a silken gown in summer, and a woolen gown in winter, 
and black worsted gloves, always with the middle finger of 
the right-hand glove slit that he might more conveniently 
turn the leaves of the Bible, and the hymn-book, and his 
own sermons. 

And it looks at first as if we were going to have 
a book of the country life of Curtis's own 3'outh 
in a rural town in Massachusetts, but New York 
city soon draws in the characters, and it ends in 
a whirlpool of fashion and folly, amidst which 
the face of Hope Wayne shines out serene and 
unspoiled, sweet and lovable to the end. There 
is a dreadful Aunt Dagon (who ought to have 
been Dragon), and upstart people who have noth- 
ing but money — the Dinkses and Newts and Van 
Boosenbergs and their kind. 

In that novel you have a vivid description of 
the wonderful boy-preacher, Summerfield, who 



2l6 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR VOUNG FOLKS. 

magnetized the people, so that one of his hearers 
said : 

I have been into the old John Strut meeting-house when 
the crowds hung out of the windows and doors like swarm- 
ing bees clustered upon a hive. He swayed them as wind 
bends a grain field. 

Somewhat in contrast to this boy with the sweet 
blue eyes, and " face of earnest expression and a 
kind of fairy sweetness," comes a fine account of 
Dr. Channing, whose style and influence were evi- 
dently not without potence over Curtis, whose 
belief is of the Channing order. Read it, that 
you may know just what was the presence and 
manner of that distinguished New England di- 
vine of rarely fine qualities and saintly life : 

In a few minutes a slight man, wrapped in a black silk 
gown slowly ascended the pulpit stairs, and before seating 
himself stood for a moment looking down at the congrega- 
tion. His face was small and thin and pale, but there was 
a pure light, an earnest spiritual sweetness in the eyes — the 
irradiation of an an.xious soul. . . . A natural manly can- 
dor certified the truth of every word he spoke. ... Ashe 
warmed in his discourse a kind of celestial grace glimmered 
about his person, and his pale, thoughtful face kindled and 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 217 

beamed with holy light. His sentences were entirely simple. 
. . • The people sat as if they were listening to a dis- 
embodied soul. 

You will remember that in The Minister's Woo- 
ing of Mrs. Stowe you have a powerful portraiture 
of another New England clergyman of former 
days, and that to the novelist we often owe some 
of the best pictures of actual people that we find 
anywhere in print. 

Another book by Curtis which had great popu- 
larity, showing up the hollowness and snobbish- 
ness of New York society, after the same Thack- 
eray manner, was The Potiphar Papers ; but those 
of his writings of greatest interest to you are 
the books of travel, the Nile Notes of a IIow- 
adji, and The Howadji in Syria. Romantic yet 
realistic, steeped in the poetry and glow of the 
orient, each volume of his Eastern experiences 
has the same luxuriance of language, while giving 
at the same time a more satisfactory' impression of 
the scenes and places than columns of matter- 
of-fact description would do. They are summer 
books, to dream over, under the trees, in the 



2l8 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

hammock, on the veranda. Different books are 
for different times and seasons and places. Some 
are to be read when snow-bound, in acosey corner 
by the evening lamp ; some are for odd hours, 
left to lie about on the window seat and taken up 
by snatches, like Leigh Hunt's; some are for 
travelling companions, but the Howadji books are 
for summer days. Esthetic, leisurely, strangely 
fascinating, and potent over the young imagina- 
tion. There is a golden haze about them, and 
yet through it we see distinctly what he said, and 
in a light we can never forget. Here are bits from 
what he says about his first sight of Jerusalem : 

I passed rapidly over this lofty, breezy table-land with an in- 
conceivable ardor of expectation. ... As I paced more 
slowly along the hills, the words of the psalm suddenly 
rang through my mind, like a sublime organ peal through a 
hushed cathedral. " Beautiful for situation, the joy of the 
whole earth is Mount Zion, on the sides of the North, the city 
of the Great King." . . . The high land unrolled itself 
more broadly. The breezy morning died into silent noon. 
. . . There was a low line of wall, a minaret, a black dome, 
a few flat roofs, and in the midst a group of dark, slender 
c}prcssc: , ami oli\cs aiul [ alms. There lay Jerusalem dead 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, 219 

in the white noon. The desolation of the wilderness 
moaned at her gates. There was no suburb of trees or 
houses. She lay upon a high hill in the midst of hills bar- 
ren as those we had passed. There were no sights or 
sounds of life. The light was colorless, the air was still. 
Nature had swooned around the dead city. There was no 
sound in the air; but a wailing in my heart. 

When he was in Nazareth the music of the con- 
vent bells brought up that New England town 
which was Hope Wayne's home, and here follows 
an autobiographic passage which perfectly repre- 
sents both the style and the meditative spirit of 
the man : 

My heart sang hymns, and preached of remembered 
days and places, — June Sundays in country churches, to 
which we walked along the edges of the fields, and under 
branching elms hushed in Sunday repose, — of the long, 
village road, with the open wagons and chaises, in which 
the red-handed farmers in holiday suits drove the red- 
cheeked family to the church-door, . . . the long sermon, 
of which I faithfully remembered the text and forgot the drift, 
and in which the names of Galilee, and Mary, and Nazareth 
were sweet sounds only, filling my mind with vague imagery, 
whose outline has long since faded, the flowers and the 
sunny hay fields breathing sweetly in at the open window, 



220 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

. . . the people in the pews, all whose faces have vanished 
now, save hers, so many years my elder, yet still radiant 
with youth, queenly in beauty and bearing, who came, when 
all were seated, following the old grandfather with powdered 
hair and gold-headed cane, and who sat serene during the 
service, while I, an eight years' child, felt a vague sadness 
overshadow the sweet day, and quite forgot the sermon. 

Compare his pictures with those of any other 
writer of Eastern travel. The Howadji's have 
that golden light thrown over prosaic reality. 
His is the very romance of travel. There is noth- 
ing else so steeped in oriental atmosphere — you 
feel it as you feel the warm, soft air of a summer 
night. He takes in all that is picturesque and 
genial, and yields himself to the spell, which you, 
too, will come under ; and you, too, will dream as 
he did and think yourself in Syria or on the 
Nile. 

You will find it interesting to take up books by 
other writers over the same routes. Look over 
those of Bayard Taylor ; 77;*? Land and the Book of 
Dr. Thomson ; Henry M. Field's From Egypt to 
Japan^ On the Desert, and Among the Holy Hills ; 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 221 

William C. Prime's Boat-Life in Egypt and Nubia 
and Tent-Life in the LLoly Land ; Charles Dudley 
Warner's My Winter on the Nile and Ltt the Lei'ant ; 
in a word acquaint yourself with the experiences 
and impressions of different authors on the same 
subject, and so test your powers of criticism and 
comparison, and arrive at your own conclusions. 
George William Curtis was born in Providence, 
Rhode Island, Feb. 24, 1824. He was one of the 
brilliant company who tried the famous Brook 
Farm experiment ; spent two years in foreign travel, 
and after his return was on the staff of the New 
York Tribune; was editor of that capital but short- 
lived magazine, Putnam! s Monthly ; was for many 
years, as you know, one of the most popular speak- 
ers in the " lecture field," and long ago (perhaps 
more than thirty years) settled into the Easy Chair 
of LLay-per's Monthly, since which withdrawal, no 
more books. His books belong to his early man- 
hood ; but, as before indicated, the same qualities 
of elegance, high-breeding, refined taste which dis- 
tinguish the man, are in all his work. The occu- 
pant of the Easy Chair is the Howadji of old. The 



222 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

essay-ish paragraphs from that cosey retreat are 
choice and captivating. 

His home is on Staten Island, and near it is a 
little Gothic church where sometimes of a Sunday, 
he reads a sermon. A lady who was an ardent 
admirer of his, while visiting in the neighborhood 
went one day to hear him, and she wrote to a 
friend : 

" The small church in which he officiates is a 
quaint building with many points, the surroundings 
being quite country-like. As we sat in the car- 
riage waiting for the gates to open, the birds sang, 
making sweeter music than the bells. . . The 
chancel window is of stained glass, circular, and 
the colors blue and gold, and each side are fluted 
pillars the same colors ; a little lower down, the 
organ ; and as these are the prevailing tints every- 
thing harmonizes and the effect is very pretty. As 
Mr. Curtis walked up the aisle, my first impression 
of him was of harmony. I was not disappointed 
in the man who wrote Prue and /, and if he had 
leaned over the desk excusing Adoniram's absence 
from church I should not have been surprised. . . 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 223 

. I never heard such clear, fine pronunciation as 
his ; it must have required years of study to have 
reached such perfection." 

Note. — The list of Curtis's books is as follows : Lotus Eating 
(a record of summer rambles in America), A'i'/^ Notes of a 
Howadji, Prue and /, The Hozvadji in Syria, The Potiphar 
Papers, Trtimps. A sketch of his Life is to be found in The 
Century for February, 1S83. 




DONALD GRANT MITCHELL. 



XII. 

DONALD GRANT MITCHELL. 

LET US call him Ik Marvel, for by that name 
and no other we first knew him, in those early 
books, Reveries of a Bachelor and Dream Life. Here 
is the identical Dream Life now, which has been 
lying about on some handy shelf, as if somebody 
would be wanting to take it up, for these twenty- 
five years or more ; in dark-green covers, with 
red edges, a much thumbed and slightly shaky 
volume, but good for service for many years to 
come. 

If you were to look it over — this book written 
in his early manhood — you would notice the same 
quality which has continued to prove captivating 
to his readers all along through everything he has 
written since. You will see a love of country life, 
warm and abiding ; an intuitive sense of the beau- 
227 



2 28 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

tiful, refinement, and taste ; and underlying all, 
prevailing over all, that delicacy and sympathy 
and tenderness of feeling which we call sentiment. 
Not sentimentality : do not mistake, for there 
is a wide, wide difference between the two, as 
wide as that between an affected and a natural 
feeling, between sham and sincerity, for one is 
true while the other is pretence. Shall we not 
define sentiment in the words of Sir William 
Hamilton, as a term " applied to the higher feel- 
ings ? " You will understand it as you read Ik 
Marvel. In this very book, Dreafn Life, in the 
second chapter, called " With my Reader," he 
confesses to his sympathy and his honesty in writ- 
ing down his fancies, and says : 

Nature is very much the same thing in one man that it is 
in another : and as I have already said, Feeling has a higher 
truth in it than circumstance. Let it only be touched fairly 
and honestly, and the heart of humanity answers. . . . 
Of one thing I am sure : — if my pictures are fair, worthy, 
and hearty, you must see it in the reading. 

That is just what has come to pass. People 
have recognized what he hoped they would, and 



DONALD GRANT MITCHELL. 



229 



those who read him of the new generation that 
has come up since the words were written, appre- 
ciate tliat truth to human experience, those touches 
which show the whole world of one kin in loving 
and hoping, in suffering and sorrowing. He is 
sympathetic and tender ; the very atmosphere of 
his books is genial ; they are full of home love, 
fireside content, family life, and the domestic feel- 
ings which no one can too sacredly cherish, the 
sweet sanctities and charities of every-day living 
under the same roof-tree, by the same hearth-side. 
Then, again, his own personality is in every 
volume, almost on every page. How unlike au- 
thors are in this respect you will one day know, 
when you are able to discriminate through wider 
reading and careful study and comparison. Some 
writers hardly give you a hint of their individuality, 
they are so separate from their books, as if the 
books were merely the result of brain-work, or 
were purely imaginative or outside of themselves. 
Yet, after all, it is this personality which interests 
us and invests one's writings with a charm whose 
power is felt at once ; even if it is such bare ego 



230 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

tism as in the case of Ruskin, we delight in it. 
What is there more attractive than the frank reve- 
lations in those chapters of Prceterita just now 
being publislied, where John Ruskin shows us all 
his heart and talks about himself with the candor 
of dear old Anthony TroUope in his autobiography ? 
Ik Marvel does not follow the Ruskin method, 
to be sure, but the boy, the collegian, the man in 
his own library, in his garden, abroad in his 
fields, is before us. We know his tastes, his fav- 
orite books, his walks, his employments, his feel- 
ings. We have him for a companion, and he is 
always that, more than he is the author. So it 
follows that the books he wrote are winning and 
engaging, and very much alive they are, too, with 
real life-blood pulsing through them. 

Of all American authors I can think of no one 
who has so much of boy feeling and boy experi- 
ence, who understands a boy's nature so well. 
Usually it is in the country that his boy finds de- 
light, and there is nothing worth finding out or 
enjoying that he does not know and enter into. 
Ik Marvel was not in a strict sense country-born, 



DONALD GRANT MITCHELL. 23 1 

for his native place was the old town of Norwich 
in Connecticut (where his life began in April, 
1822), but he must have early known the joys that 
farm-life has for a child. It is Connecticut coun- 
try living that he pictures ; the flavor of the old 
hill pastures, of the meadows and orchards, of 
blooming peach-trees, of fennel and clover, of 
wild-grapes in grape-time and nuts in nutting-time 
is along the pages. That State has had liberal 
treatment in the lighter literature of New Eng- 
land, in Mrs. Stowe's old-time stories and those of 
Rose Terry Cooke and Ik Marvel's loving repro- 
ductions of landscape and farm-life as in his boy- 
hood he delighted in them and in manhood trans- 
ferred them to his magic page. 

I have marked a score of passages in his books 
to quote for you, beginning with the old garret : 

I know no nobler forage ground for a romantic, venture- 
some, mischievous boy, than the garret of an old family 
mansion on a day of storm. It is a perfect field of chivalry. 
The heavy rafters, the dashing rain, the piles of spare mat- 
tresses to carouse upon, the big trunks to hide in, the old 
white coats and hats hanging in obscure corners, like ghosts 



232 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

— are great ! And it is so far away from the old lady who 
keeps rule in the nursery that there is no possible risk of a 
scolding. . . . There is no baby in the garret to wake 
up. There is no company in the garret to be disturbed by 
the noise. There is no crotchety old uncle, or grandma, 
with their everlasting — "Boys — boys! " — and then a look 
of such horror 1 

But there is not space for many of them. This, 
however, you shall have about the Fourth of July, 
from one of his later books, Bound Together : 

I do not know what the habit of the boys' schools may be 
now-a-days; but in those old times when loe wore round- 
abouts, and studied Adams' Latin Grammar, the Master (or 
" Principal," as we Scottishly called him) used to give us a 
day's excursion by omnibus or stage-coach on the Fourth. 
And we piled into, and all over such vehicles, by the dozen, 
infesting the doors and windows and roof — hanging about 
the beloved stage-coach like bees on gone-by fruit — making 
the hills resound with our jollity. . . . The old ladies, 
standing akimbo in the doors, stared blank astonishment 
at us through their iron-rimmed spectacles, and shy girls 
caught admiring glimpses of our spick and span new white 
drilling from behind the farm-house curtains. What a tri- 
umphal progress it was to be sure ! Dew on the grass, 
larks singing, late roses blooming, cherries ripening, tall 



DONALD GRANT MITCHELL. 233 

rye waving, the old coach crick-cracking. . . . Then we 
stopped towards high noon at some huge, lumbering vil- 
lage tavern for dinner. A tavern dinner ! — my mouth 
waters even now to think what ambrosian fare had been 
provided. ... A turkey — positively a turkey (and 
stuffed too) — at one end of the long table, and at the other 
— great heavens ! — a dapper, crisp, curled-tailed pig, with 
a sprig of parsley in his mouth, and giblets and what-not, 
in a little paunch-y tureen of gravy close by. 

And this : 

Who that feels the gray shadows of middle age thickening 
over his head (for my part I confess to it) does not remem- 
ber the peach-orchard near to every old homestead of New 
England, and the rich burden of rare-ripes and free-stones 
and cling-stones (before yet the magnificent Melocoton was 
known) and how round-jacketed school-boys with big 
pouches of pockets thought it no theft to abstract a few 
from between the fence-bars. 

And these scraps — tantalizing enough I trust to 
make you read Ik Marvel and become acquainted 
with him : 

I believe that boys' vacations, now-a-days, come around 
in July, or thereabouts; but five and thirty years ago, in 
those boys' schools of which I had painful experience, va- 



234 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

cations happened somewhere in October. . . , What a 
gorgeous thing it was to take that first tramp after the re- 
turn . . . through the melon-patch where the yellow- 
faced cantaloupes smiled at us ! We knew well enough that 
the cantaloupes would not be gone ; we knew some " roasting 
ears " would be left : we knew the Pound-sweets would be 
just at their best. ... I do not know how a month 
could have a better naming for a boy than to be called va- 
cation month. ... I think that a good, wholesome long- 
ing for vacation-time to come is one of the best possible 
evidences that a boy is kept up to the notch of a good daily 
gain. 

And now see what advice he gives in the clos- 
ing words of "Two College Talks," to students : 

Live up to the level of your best thought ; keep the line 
of your life tense and true ; it is but a thread ; but it be- 
longs to the great Republican warp, where Time is weaving 
a Nation. You cannot alter its attachment yonder, to the 
past — nor yonder, to the unrolling years. . . . And if 
you would broider such things there as will stand fast, and 
carry your name worthily upon the roll of history, you will 
have need of all your energy to dare — all your cultivation 
to refine — of all your charity to ennoble. 

Let the hope of this . • . keep you wakeful to all 
honorable duties. Let it make you bold, and honest, and 



DONALD GRANT MITCHELL. 235 

painstaking. Let it nerve you to shun affectations — to hate 
shams — to love truth — to cherish simplicity; and then — 
whatever may betide — you will walk with a freer and more 
elastic step toward the gates, where we must all go in. 

Ik Marvel wrote one novel, about twenty years 
ago, Dr. jfoJms, the story of an old-time Con- 
necticut minister, and he has a volume called 
Seven Stories, with Basement and Attic, made up 
from reminiscences of travel; but with these ex- 
ceptions, and the two named at the beginning of 
this paper, his writings are chiefly of rural life. 

Many years ago he bought a country place not 
far from New Haven, and there after his own 
tasteful plan re-modelled and embellished till the 
beautiful home which he named Edgewood grew 
with the years, as a true home with all its acces- 
sories and adornments of tree and vine, of shrub 
and lawn must grow, for it does not come into 
being in a day. To know about it, and how the 
master's heart was in all the work and in all the 
growing, you must read My Fa7-m of Edgewood — 
a book practical enough for an agriculturist, yet 
romantic enough for a poet ; picturesque, and full 



236 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

of that personality before referred to. You will 
read about the stone cottage he built, with its gables 
and sharp pent roof, the gray walls which lichens 
and creepers are decorating, and all about his 
country tastes which have made it so attractive 
without, so restful within. 

If you wish to know more about it, and see the 
sketches of house and gable, of porch and gate- 
way, and know just what the ideas of the owner 
were and are, about the making of a home, from 
the house-building down to the simplest details, 
which with him are esthetic and refined, read Out- 
of-Town Places. 

If you would know yet more, and more about 
the owner, read Wet Days at Edgewood, which is 
made up of rambling sketches about some of the 
" worthies " who wrote something concerning 
agriculture. Of such books he says he has " a 
motley array " in one corner of his library. Be 
not deterred by the fact that he calls them "farm- 
books," for not to these does he confine himself; 
on the contrary, they serve as the excuse (as one 
may say) for some of the most delightful off-hand 



DONALD GRANT MITCHELL, 237 

writing and personal revelations of our author him- 
self. They remind one of Leigh Hunt in more 
ways than one, but chiefly in that joy in books 
which is so marked a feature in Hunt. 

What Ik Marvel says so lovingly and gracefully 
about Virgil and others among the ancients is 
pleasant reading for your, own rainy days ; and 
be sure to read those papers, called " A Picture 
of Rain," "English Weather," "Old English 
Homes," "A British Tavern," "A Brace of Pas- 
torals," "Goldsmith," "William Cowper," "Gil- 
bert White," and " Country Story-tellers." What 
toothsome dainties in prose they are ! If you are 
tempted to take up some of the authors he writes 
about, so much the better. Why not read the 
Vicar of Wakefield after you have read what he 
says. " I do," he writes, " still keep his Essays 
or his Vicar in my hand, or in my thought most 
lovingly." 

And how can you let " As you Like It " alone 
after reading : 

Gne pastoral remains to mention, published at the very 
opening of the year 1600, and spending its fine forest- 



238 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

aroma thenceforward all down the century. I mean Shakes- 
peare's play of " As you Like It." 

From beginning to end the grand old forest of Arden is 
astir overhead; from beginning to end the brooks brawl' 
in your ear ; from beginning to end you smell the bruised 
ferns and the delicate-scented wood flowers. ... Who 
. . . will match us the fair, lithe, witty, capricious, mirth- 
ful, buxom Rosalind? Nowhere in books have we met 
with her like, — but only at some long-gone picnic in the 
woods, where we worshipped "blushing sixteen" in dainty 
boots and white muslin. . . . 

. . . "As you Like It " is as broad as the sky, or love, 
or folly, or hope. 

In Bound Together — the felicitous title of a 
" Sheaf of Papers" — you come upon more of the 
Edge wood pastorals, under the divisions called 
" Procession of the Months," and " In doors and 
Out of doors," winding up with a children's chapter 
and Thanksgiving Day. 

The influence of Ik Marvel is tranquilizing and 
refining. If sometimes there is an excess of sen- 
timent, we know that the springs are pure and 
sweet, the sources deep and unfailing of such 
tender feeling that we do not care to criticise. 



DONALD GRANT MITCHELL. 239 

He has kept his hold upon two generations of 
readers because he is true to human nature, in 
sympathy with childhood, and one at heart with 
youths and maidens, so that the stories he tells 
are their own lives, their own hopes and joys and 
anticipations. There is an air of repose, of rest- 
fulness and peace about his writings. Some one 
has said of them that " they are the wood-fire on 
the hearth in American letters. They are light, 
warmth, cheer." 



Note. — Nearly all his writings are in the following books : 

Fresh Gleanings (European Travel), Reveries of a Barhelor, 
Dream Life, My Farm of Edgewood, Wet Days at Edge- 
ivood, Out-of-Town Places (formerly Rural Studies), Doctor 
Johns, Seven Stories, "with Basement and Attic, Bound To- 
gether, About Old Story- Tellers ; and a new and complete edi- 
tion has just been published, in unique, simple style, with 
characteristic prefatory notes by the author. 




JACOB ABBOTT. 



XIII. 



H. H." AND OTHERS. 



SINCE this series of papers was begun, one of 
the foremost women-writers of America has 
passed from this life. The hand of " H. H," will 
write nothing more. How pathetic that brief 
statement seems when we think of the brilliant 
spirit that was here a little more than a year ago ! 

It is well worth your while at this time, when 
her last work is passing through the press, to give 
attention to the books she has contributed to our 
literature. I know that they are all about you, 
some of them, indeed, almost fresh from her pen 
— it seems but yesterday, perhaps, that you read 
Ratnona, and Zeph you have but just laid down. 

Looking back now and considering how late it 
was when she began writing prose (in 1866, when 
she was thirty-five years old), never dreaming of 

243 



244 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS, 

becoming an author of distinction, we are sur- 
prised at both the quantity and quality. 

Let me recall to you, in scantest outline, her 
personal and literary history. As " H. H." the 
world of her readers — and a wide world it is — ■ 
has known and will remember her ; the two modest 
initials which represent such an amount of ex- 
quisite work, which have always been so warmly 
welcomed, and which will be so sadly missed! 
Helen Maria Fiske was her maiden name, and she 
was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, October i8, 
1831. On the 28th of October, 1852, she was 
married to Captain Edward B. Hunt of the United 
States Army, and on the 2d of October, 1863, she 
became a widow. One son had died when an 
infant, and the other died in less than two years 
after his father, so that, bereaved and heart- 
broken, she withdrew from society and even from 
her best friends, giving herself up to the feeling 
that life had nothing more for her. 

She had a fine, natural gift of expression in 
poetry, and when the first sharp pain was over she 
did what hundreds of others have done, put her 



" H. H. AND OTHERS. 245 

sorrow into verse, and soon the world recognized 
a new poet. A sketch called " In the White 
Mountains " was her introduction to prose, and 
the success and fame which eventually came to 
her from this simple beginning were a revelation 
and continual surprise to her. 

In October, 1875, ^^^ '^^.s married to William 
Sharpless Jackson, and thenceforth her home was 
in Colorado Springs, whence she went for benefit 
to her health, to California, where, in San Fran- 
cisco, she died August 12, 1885. 

How slight is this thread of facts concerning a 
woman so rich in personal and intellectual gifts, 
of a spirit so alert, so responsive, so versatile, so 
full of enthusiasm ! You know well how her 
burning indignation found a voice that made it- 
self heard for the Indian ; and you will mark all 
through her writings that she was easily kindled 
— a marvellously susceptible, electric being, all 
ardor and fire. You see it all through her Bits of 
Talk about Home Matters, where she enters the 
lists, or charges as a free lance, in hot attack on 
those who are guilty of wrongs to children. 



246 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Never did childhood have a more fearless, a more 
valiant champion, and one can but think how in- 
judicious parents must have winced under the 
pricks and thrusts of her weapon that pierced the 
stoutest mail. 

Her feelings were intense and her powers of 
observation of the keenest ; she had the swift in- 
tuitions of genius and her pen was true to the 
thing she had to say. Gifts for writing may come 
by nature, but if that were all, how discouraging 
it would be ! What if " H. H." had never de- 
veloped what she seems hardly to have known she 
possessed until the accident (almost) of a single 
sketchy article in prose induced her to attempt 
further work ? Study, reading, culture, pains- 
taking, thoroughness — all these are quantities 
which enter into the training of a writer. No suc- 
cessful author ever trusted to born gifts ; the 
equipments are not ready provided, and it is not 
always a royal highway with banners flying along 
which one goes. I think I have seen that she 
was an acute critic of her own composition as well 
as that of others ; that she made a careful study 



"h. h. and others. 247 

of style, and, as an instance of it, that she took 
certain paragraphs of Higginson's which she much 
admired and changed the construction of the sen- 
tences to see in what their power and beauty as 
purely literary work consisted, and if any other 
arrangement would do as well. 

You might try that with almost any descriptive 
page of her writing. You will find a wonderful 
affluence of language, charged with feeling, often 
the words rushing on impetuously; but what ar- 
tistic finish, fitness, and completeness ! Take this 
from her description of the Rocky Mountains in 
her Bits of Travel at Home : 

There seemed no defined horizon to west, or north, or 
south ; only a great, outlying continent of mountain peaks, 
bounding, upholding, containing the valley, and rounding, 
upholding and piercing the dome above it. There was no 
sound, no sight, no trace of human life. The silence, the 
sense of space in these Rocky Mountain solitudes cannot 
be expressed, neither can the peculiar atmospheric beauty 
be described. It is the result partly of the grand distances, 
partly of the rarefied air. The shapes are the shapes of 
the north, but the air is like the air of the tropics, shimmer- 
ing, kindling. . . . No dome of Constantinople or 



248 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Venice, no pyramid of Egypt ever glowed and swam in 
warmer light and of warmer hue than do these colossal 
mountains. 

Read what she says about the wild flowers of 
Colorado, where words crowd upon words as if 
they could not keep pace with her admiration, 
and the very pages glow and burn with color. 
Read about the gorgeousness, the glory of autumn 
woods at Bethlehem in what she calls the " Mir- 
acle Play," and wherever she writes of skies or 
flowers, of anything rich, warm, beautiful. Her 
tastes were sumptuous ; she revelled in color, and 
nowhere can be found finer word paintings than 
in her books. And the descriptions are always in 
harmony with the subject. Here, for example, 
from " The Katrina Saga," in Glimpses of Three 
Coasts, is a bit from the page and a half about the 
islands of the Norway coast : 

There are myriads of them still unknown, untrodden, and 
sure to remain so forever, no matter how long the world 
may last. ... At the mouths of the great fjords they 
seem sometimes to have fallen back and into line, as if to 
do honor to whomever might come sailing in. They must 



"h. h. and others. 249 

have greatly helped the splendor of the processions of 
viking ships, a thousand years ago, in the days when a vik- 
ing thought nothing of setting sail for the south or the east 
with six or seven hundred ships in his fleet. If their birch- 
trees were as plumy then as now, there was nothing finer 
than they in all that a viking adorned his ships with not 
even the gilt dragons at the prow. 

If you wish to appreciate some of the finest 
work done by any of our countrymen and women, 
read Ramona again. It will bear more than one 
perusal. Leaving out of the question the purpose 
for which it was written, and reading it just as a 
story, consider its attractiveness and power. Notice 
the grace of the narrative — how easily it slips 
along without a break or a dull sentence or a sen- 
tence you would skip ! the charm of the language, 
not a word that does not fit its place — how tempt- 
ing and how delightful it is ! the beauty of the 
description — you are transported to the Mexican 
house and are sharer of the life on the balcony, 
in the court, are present at the sheep-shearing and 
the feast ! the reality and life-likeness of the peo- 
ple who live there — you become intent upon 



250 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

watching the movements of the shrewd Senora 
and wonder over the success or failure of her 
plans. Study its construction, and the way in 
which character develops ; see with what a firm 
hand the author keeps the mastery over her sub- 
ject, and yet with what impetuosity of feeling she 
enters into the wrongs of Ramona and Allessan- 
dro! You will enjoy comparing this story with 
two strong novelettes by another of our best 
women writers — The Led Horse Claim a.nd Jb/in 
Bodewin's Testimofiy, by Mary Hallock Foote, the 
artist author. 

In reading " H. H," you always have a sense 
of such exuberance, such rapturous enjoyment of 
everything, perfume, flowers, sky and sea, scenery, 
travel ; she was part of them, partner, sharer with 
them. She threw her whole soul into everything, 
and a vital, positive life pulses along her pages. 
Bear this in your thought as your eye follows down 
the lines, and see how alive they are. You can 
separate some authors from their work ; or, to put it 
as it is, you cannot by any possibility connect them 
with it as a warm, human, living force ; you can- 



H. H. ' AND OTHERS. 



251 



not by what is written tell what manner of man or 
woman held the pen. But " H. H." is in every 
line, an ardent, eager, spirited woman, full of 
poetry, glowing with enthusiasm which was ready 
to leap into flame, and infusing herself into every- 
thing she wrote, coloring everything by her own 
personality. In no other American woman is this 
so pronounced a trait ; in few will you find a nat- 
ure at the same time so tropical and so sympa- 
thetic, taking expression in a style as clear and 
vigorous as it is captivating. 

Especially for children she wrote Nelly's Silver 
Mine, Bits of Talk for Young Folks, Mammy Tittle- 
back and her Family, and The Hunter Cats of Con- 
norloa, besides editing Letters frotn a Cat (which 
was by her mother). The titles of her other prose 
works are Bits of Travel (foreign, and very charm- 
ing). Bits of Travel at Home (California, Colorado 
and New England), Bits of Talk aboict Home Mat- 
ters, Mercy Philbrick^s Choice, Hetty's Strange His- 
tory, Ramona, A Century of Dishonor, Zeph, Glimpses 
of Three Coasts (California and Oregon, Scotland 
and England, Norway, Denmark and Germany) ; 



252 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS, 

and soon to be published, Betweeti Whiles, a vol- 
ume of short stories, of which, not long before her 
death she wrote to her publishers, "Isn't it a 
lovely title ? " 

To what other authors of the many there are, 
shall I call your attention in the space that is left 
me ? Do you need, does this generation of young 
people need, to be reminded of the beloved Jacob 
Abbott who did more for them, I have no hesita- 
tion in saying, than any other writer, perhaps it 
would be safe to say than any two or more wri- 
ters ? Abraham Lincoln paid his tribute to the 
little " Red Histories " by saying that he learned 
from them all the history he ever knew ; and here, 
not many weeks ago, a lady who has written many 
excellent things, in a little article about bringing 
up boys, says, "over all the years that lie be- 
tween us, I send my love to Jonas, as one of the 
best companions a little girl ever had, and the 
charming mentor of the little girl's brother." 

Did it ever occur to you that so long ago as the 
time when Washington Irving and Cooper were 
writing sketches and novels this author was busy 



"h. h, and others. 253 

over books for the young, and that he kept on 
writing book after book for them, and that that 
good, wise pen of his was never idle ? He had 
wonderful tact and skill as a teacher, in manage- 
ment, in understanding character, a clear insight 
into what the needs of young people were, and 
from writing something to help those immediate- 
ly under his care, the question naturally arose. 
Why not help thousands of boys and girls ? Hence 
some of the wise and sound little books which 
have gone on in their influence in the ratio of 
Edward Everett Hale's Ten Times One. 

The mind of Jacob Abbott must have been as 
clear as crystal to judge by the way his thoughts 
appear in print, by his accurate way of putting 
things, candid, discriminating and to the point. 
They are every day facts and moral lessons, but 
duty is presented as a pleasure, and the right way 
as the tempting way. Practical duties and em- 
ployments, doing good, living right, building up 
character — these are favorite themes, just as 
vital to-day as when he wrote, and more needed, 
good for a thousand years and as much longer as 



254 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

human nature, boy and girl nature, are what they 
were and are. 

You have already had loving biographies of this 
teacher, pastor and author, and I am not expected 
to dwell upon the subject, but let me say that not 
long ago I had occasion to look over some of his 
books in a great public library, and found them 
thumbed and worn — that told the story of their 
popularity. History, biography, travels, science, 
out-of-door employments — he wrote of all these. 
In his series of adventure and travel he was pio- 
neer of the Family Flights, the Zig-Zag and Bodley 
books and so many of that class which are favor- 
ites to-day. The stories of history and of biog- 
raphy written by himself and his brother (John 
S. C. who was also preacher and teacher) do not 
go out of date. Divided into " Founders of Em- 
pires, "British Kings and Queens," "Queens and 
Heroines," " Heroes of Roman History," " Later 
British Kings and Queens," and " Rulers of Later 
Times," they make a trim and compact little ref- 
erence library of much in small space for your 
handy corner and often use. Any young person 



"h. h, and others. 255 

who was brought up on Jacob Abbott's clear sense 
books, before the days of sensationalism, has 
something to be grateful for ; and one who goes 
to them now finds soundness and simplicity, 
wholesome truth wholesomely treated, a whole 
gospel to be guided by. 

You hardly need to have recalled to your mind 
another friend not long gone from this life, the 
author of Yesterdays with Authors, and Underbrush. 
The first-named is one of the books that stimulates 
the love for books. James T. Fields appreciated 
literature himself, and was a leal friend to the 
young writers who went to him with their first- 
lings. He had keenest joy in books, and in those 
papers he shows the pleasant side, to make his 
authors attractive. It was one of the intense de- 
sires of his later life to have a good influence over 
young people, and his words are wise and cheer- 
I ing from out his own experience and genial whole- 
heartedness. In his Underbrush he says: 

Instead of trying so hard as some of us do to be happy, 
as if that were the sole purpose of life, I would, if I were 
a boy again, try still harder to deserve happiness. 



256 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Of books and authors, this is characteristic of 
the man : 

We can never be grateful enough to the men and women 
who have written books to make us more in love with the 
beauties and harmonies of nature, who have themselves 
been transported with the glories of her divine works. 

And he adds that he always felt like taking off 
his hat when he met in the street the man (George 
B. Emerson) who wrote that valuable and attract- 
ive work on the " Trees and Shrubs of Massa- 
chusetts." 

Already you have a long list, but you must add 
the dainty prose of Aldrich ; and Warner with his 
mellowness and humor ; and Holmes with his 
scintillations of wit flashing like the white light, 
the pellucid light of diamonds — unique, the only 
man of his kind, it will be long before you see 
another *' autocrat." And in choosing American 
books do not forget Charles G. Leland's Algonquin 
Legends, and his book about the gypsies ; or 
Drake's Old Landmarks of Boston^ and Nooks and 
Corners of the New England Coast, and others from 
his pen ; or Mrs. Rollins' New England By-gones^ 



"h. h." and others. 257 

a vivid reproduction of rural home-life sweet and 
true and charming, loyal to the past, but fresh as 
a morning in May ; or Dana's Two Years before the 
Mast^ best of all sea-books that have been written 
from a sailor's point of view, as enchanting for a 
boy as the Arabian Nights, as homely in its de- 
tails as Robinson Crusoe. What vitality there is 
about a book which has real life inside of it, in its 
texture and substance, in its warp and woof ! And 
such is this. 

I cannot refrain from including another book, 
most delightful in its pictures of life in the Old 
Dominion, having the appearance of being genuine- 
ly as well as in form autobiographic (as it per- 
haps is to some extent) — the jfudith of Marion 
Harland, to me more fascinating than anything 
else of hers I have ever read. 

And yet one more, a thin volume of only five 
sketches — and one of them incomplete — its title 
Old Salem. The author, who wrote under the 
name of " Eleanor Putnam," was Mrs, Harriet L, 
V, Bates, and she died at Brookline, Massachu- 
setts, March 13, 1886, at about the age of thirty. 



258 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

I should like to quote liberally from " Old Salem 
Shops," and from " A Salem Dame School," to 
which she went wearing antiquated raiment, and 
carrying for a satchel 

the old green bag in which my grandfather had carried his 
law papers. It was so long and I so short that it nearly 
touched the ground as I walked, and my book and my ap- 
ple rolled about unpleasantly. 

For a choice piece of writing, a perfect little 
crystal, read her "Salem Cupboards" — it is as 
dainty a bit as you will often find, after this style : 

Foremost in the memory of delightful Salem cupboards 
stands the dining-room closet of a second-cousin of ours 
whom we called Cousin Susan. ... A most delicious 
odor came forth when the door was opened : a hint of the 
spiciness of rich cake, a tingling sense of preserved ginger, 
and a certain ineffable sweetness which no other closet ever 
possessed. ... At the left hand of Cousin Susan's 
shelves of china was a little cupboard with a diamond-paned 
glass door. . . . This little glass cupboard held the 
stock of foreign sweetmeats ; the round-shouldered blue 
jars, inclosed in network of split bamboo, which contained 
the fiery, amber ginger ; the flat boxes of guava jelly, hot 
curry powders, chilli sauce, and choleric Bengal chutney. 



"h. h. and others. 259 

Here were two miniature casks of tamarinds, jolly and 
black. . . . 

There were black fruit-cake in a japanned box ; " hearts 
and rounds " of rich yellow pound cake ; and certain deli- 
cate but inane little sponge biscuit, of which our cousin 
spoke by the old-fashioned name of diet — or, as she chose 
to pronounce it " dier " — bread. She always called the 
sponge cakes " little dier breads." 

An entire paper ought to be given to single 
books where scenes or incidents of our own coun- 
try form the subject. Another might profitably 
be devoted to biographies of American men and 
women by American writers. In the " Notes " to 
the preceding papers I have furnished you with 
many titles, but only a small number out of the 
rich store. To name a few more, beginning with 
Sparks who wrote twenty-five of persons more or 
less associated with our histor}'^, how quickly you 
are reminded of the full and carefully prepared 
and edited Lives and Letters of Daniel Webster, 
George Ticknor, Charles Sumner ; the memorials 
of Bryant, and of John Howard Payne who wrote 
" Home, Sweet Home," of Agassiz, by his wife, 



26o PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

of Jacob Abbott (including, or prefacing, the work 
its author would have desired to be best known 
by. The Yowig Christian), the Reminiscences of Wil- 
liam Ellery Channing, by Elizabeth Peabody, the 
Life and Letters of James and Lucretia Mott (de- 
lightful record of Quaker ways, of a liberal, loving 
household, and characters greatly to be admired), 
Miss Stebbins' memories of Charlotte Cushman, 
the Letters, with a biographical sketch of Lydia 
Maria Child (which will make you regret that it 
is too late to let her know how you honor her for 
her great, royal heart of unselfish devotion to a 
cause she was enlisted in, for her loyalty to friends 
and her patience and bravery), the memoir of 
Mrs. Edward Livingston, of Mary Lyon, of Alice 
B. Haven, of Mary L. Ware, of Mrs. Prentiss 
(author of Stepping Heaven7i)ard), that of General 
Bartlett, of James T. Fields, Holmes' memoir of 
Motley, the sketches called Worthy Women of our 
First Century (which includes that rare woman and 
scholar, Mrs. Ripley of Concord, Massachusetts), 
the list of distinguished men in the " American 
Statesmen " series, and "American Men of Let- 



" H. H." AND OTHERS. 261 

ters " series ; and scores of others might be in- 
cluded, and nearly all are histories of the lives of 
Americans. 

What treasures await you, lie ready at your 
hand ! All are histories of the lives of Americans, 
worthy your earnest perusal, full of interest, in 
many cases having a charm beyond stories. How 
rich in lessons of wisdom and statesmanship, of 
culture and refinement, of goodness and Chris- 
tian experience, of benevolence and self-denial, of 
true living and high thinking, of aspiration and 
endeavor, of fidelity to truth, to country, to 
science, to human kind are the pages represented 
by those names ! 




JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



XIV. 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, AND OTHER CRITICS. 

YOU may be dismayed at the word " critics " 
and shrink from the phase of literature we 
are approaching, for hitherto you have had writers 
who had positive attractions for you — historians, 
novelists, essayists — and the present word sug- 
gests those who are severe, even censorious, and 
a kind of writing which is dry and prosy. But you 
will be agreeably disappointed and will take an al- 
together different view of the matter when you 
learn that a critic is not necessarily a fault-finder, 
even if that be the general opinion, and that you 
are to look upon him as a guide, as one who by 
insight, good judgment and training is qualified 
for that office. 

As fair a definition as I can give you of criti- 
cism, in words, is that it is the interpretation of 
265 



266 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

an author. It is a department in literature, and 
has become indispensable as a help and a dis- 
cipline. It opens your eyes to merits (and faults 
also) you might not have discerned ; it is an edu- 
cator of the perceptions, of the taste, and the 
weighing and comparing faculties. If you wish 
as you grow older to understand the finer shades 
of meaning, and the different styles by which dif- 
ferent writers express themselves, to be apprecia- 
tive and discriminating, and to get the best there 
is out of a book, you will be only too glad to have 
recourse to the work of critics. 

For one instance, when the time arrives for you 
to take up Shakespeare in earnest, you will if you 
are wise avail }fourself of all the helps you can 
command from those who have made him a special 
study. If you can have access to the prose of 
Coleridge you will enjoy and ponder the brief but 
forceful comments he makes : you will be aided 
by the expository touches of Hazlitt in his Charac- 
ters of Shakespeare^ s Plays ; and for a most delight- 
ful analysis of many of the heroines, you will 
hardly find anything more desirable — both to 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, AND OTHER CRITICS. 267 

read and to own — than the Characteristics of 
Women by Mrs. Anna Jameson, which is a book 
that should be in every girl's library, on that 
special shelf where stand Sesame arid Lilies, and 
Crauiford, and other sweet and true books to which 
your attention has been directed in these two 
series of authors. Criticisms on the immortal 
dramatist are very abundant, and every year adds 
to the number ; but for something that goes over 
the whole field, you cannot do better than choose 
the " Lectures " by one of our own countrymen, 
Henry Norman Hudson, a Shakespearian critic of 
high standing, one who almost deified Shakes- 
peare (which is his chief fault), but whose work is 
excellent and is the result of a life-time of study. 
You will, have no adequate idea how the beauty 
of a play like " Tempest " or of the character of a 
Miranda or Harmione will be revealed to you until 
you see them in the flood of strong light which a 
fine, sympathetic, cultured critic throws upon 
them. You need it, and will be grateful for it. 

Among living American critics the name that 
stands highest is that of James Russell Lowell; 



268 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

in liberal scholarship, keenness, brilliance and fine 
judgment no one surpasses him. The results of 
his work in this line you will find in My Study 
Windows, and in the two series called A7no7ig my 
Books. It is impossible to give you any concep- 
tion of the breadth and insight of these papers. 
Your most profitable way of reaching them will be 
in connection with the subjects they treat of. 
When you read Shakespeare, acquaint yourself 
with the one entitled " Shakespeare Once More," 
which is full of suggestions about the influences of 
the age on that dramatist, and his fitness for the 
time in which he was born, also about the struct- 
ure and the possibilities of their own noble Eng- 
lish tongue as Shakespeare used it, about his 
adaptiveness to all understandings, because he 
knew human nature and wrote of it as he saw it, 
as it was, not as it ought to be. Much food for 
you is there in that meaty paper of Lowell's. 

And when you are ready to read Wordsworth 
(as ready you must be some day), read the paper 
on him ; the same of Milton and others. That on 
Dante is considered the most thorough and by far 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, AND OTHER CRITICS. 269 

the ablest on the subject which has been produced 
in this country. Bear it in mind when the day 
arrives for Dante, and see what is the estimate put 
upon him by the most distinguished man of let- 
ters we have among us. But Milton and Words- 
worth come before the Florentine. In company 
with your " Paradise Lost," have before you what 
Lowell says of its grandeur and sweep, like this : 

In reading " Paradise Lost " one has a feelirtg of vastness. 
You float under an illimitable sky, brimmed with sunshine 
or hung with constellations ; the abysses of space are about 
you; you hear the cadenced surges of an unseen ocean; thun- 
ders mutter round the horizon ; and if the scene change, it 
is with an elemental movement like the shifting of mighty 
winds. . . He was founder of the vague, perhaps I 
should rather say the indefinite, where more is meant than 
meets the ear, than any other of our poets. He loved epi- 
thets (like old andy^zr) that suggest great reaches, whether 
of space or time. . . Milton's respect for himself and 
for his own mind and its movements rises well nigh to vene- 
ration. . . There is no such unfailing dignity as his. 

I wish I could have space to quote more, but 
you must read it, and as you do, mark the splen- 



270 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS, 

did structure of Lowell's sentences and what a 
power words are in his hands, how flexible is our 
language when a master of prose makes use of it. 
And here, in his paper on Keats, is something on 
this very subject ; most timely : 

There is a great deal more than is commonly supposed in 
this choice of words. Men's thoughts and opinions are in 
a great degree vassals of him who invents a new phrase or 
re-applies an old epithet. The thought of feeling a thousand 
times repeated becomes his at last who utters it best. . . As 
soon as we have discovered the word for our joy or sorrow 
we are no longer its serfs, but its lords. 

That sentence which I have emphazised reveals 
the secret of a writer's power. Ponder it. You 
will find these three volumes full of choice bits of 
wisdom precious to one who loves our English 
tongue and delights in the beauty and strength of 
prose. What revelations we get of the penman's 
craft, of the guild of writers, of the workmen like 
Chaucer and Spenser ! What fine, careful studies 
of the work of a single poet, like Wordsworth J 
The influences that made him what he was are 
sharply defined, his merits, and his faults, even 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, AND OTHER CRITICS. 27 I 

the wearisome poems, but then, says Lowell, in 
spite of the things that detract from his poetic 
excellence and symmetry : 

With what splendors as of mountain-sunsets are we re- 
warded ! What golden rounds of verse do we not see stretch- 
ing heavenward with angels ascending and descending! 
What haunting harmonies hover around us deep and eternal 
like the undying barytone of the sea ! and if we are com- 
pelled to fare through sands and desert wildernesses, how 
often do we not hear airy shapes that syllable our names 
with a startling personal appeal to our highest conscious- 
ness and our noblest aspiration such as we wait for in vain 
in any other poet ! 

Read this, and from page 240 on to the close of 
the paper, and you will get as just an estimate of 
Wordsworth as can be anywhere found in the same 
space, if indeed it be not clearer, wiser, fairer as 
r'ell as more sympathetic than from any other 
critic. And the glow there is about Lowell's prose 
— how soon you will see and feel it ! All the 
ripeness of his scholarship is back of it, all his 
years of training are in it. No man is born a 
writer like that ; nor does the skill come without 



272 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

painstaking and an absorption of all that is best in 
the older writers. When you consider this, you 
will begin to appreciate the value to you of one 
who brings to his pleasant task not only keenness 
of perception, but the result of his life's reading 
and work. The papers of most interest to you are 
"Carlyle," "Abraham Lincoln," and "Chaucer," 
in My Study Windows, " Shakespeare once more " 
in the first series of Amojig my Books, and " Spen- 
ser," "Wordsworth," "Milton," and "Keats," in 
the second series : there is also in the first vol- 
ume named a criticism of Thoreau which gives 
rather an adverse view of him. 

Let me refer you for some knowledge (which 
you ought to have) of a man who gave the fruit of 
his scholarship to newspaper literature in some of 
the ablest criticism our country has known, to the 
biography of the late George Ripley in the 
" American Men of Letters " series. His work 
you cannot avail yourself of, but by reading this 
record of what he did, you can at least see the im- 
portance of the department we are considering, 
and how he dignified it. See his explanation to a 



JAMES RUSSET.L LOWELL, AND OTHER CRITICS. 273 

friend of the reason for the ease with which in the 
later years of his life he " threw off " an article : 
" It is not wonderful seeing that I have been fifty 
years about it ; " and this is quoted from one of 
his reviews in illustration of his own literary prin- 
ciples : " He who does not write as well as he can 
on every occasion will soon form the habit of not 
writing well at all." Mr. Ripley was connected 
with Harper's Magazine for thirty years, a portion 
of the time as writer of literary reviews, then as a 
reader of manuscripts on all subjects, to which he 
gave his careful attention, without prejudice or 
favoritism, but always in the interests of literature, 
and then submitted his opinion. These "opin- 
ions," terse, deliberately weighed and conscien- 
tious, are said by the biographer to show better 
his " extraordinary mental force " than even his 
elaborate reviews. 

The objection of inaccessibility to the results of 
such faithful work does not apply to another man 
eminent in this field who has also lately died, 
Edwin Percy Whipple. His books are in public 
libraries, and most of them have been there a long 



2 74 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

enough time to have become well known and to 
have been well read. In all, his collected essays, 
criticisms and lectures make six volumes. He 
was a clear thinker and able writer, and has the 
distinction of being one of the earliest to give his 
energies to this kind of writing and to raise the 
tone of culture in America. In the first volume of 
his Essays and Reinews he takes a survey of the 
" Poets and Poetry of America," of " English 
Poets of the Nineteenth Century " — subjects to 
which we shall presently come in the later books 
of Stedman. In that volume you will find a nota- 
ble paper on Daniel Webster, prepared on occasion 
of the publication of the great statesman's speeches 
and forensic arguments. You may be surprised 
to see Webster ranked among writers, but Whipple 
considers him one of the masters of the English 
language, and what he says you must not fail to 
read. A passage or two I will quote : 

In all the characteristics of great literary performances 
they are fully equal to many works which have stood the 
test of ages. . . Every great writer has a style of his 
own, constructed according to the character of his mind and 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, AND OTHER CRITICS. 27.1:; 

disposition. The style of Mr. Webster has great merit, not 
only for its vigor, clearness and compression, but for the 
broad impress it bears of the writer's nature. It owes noth- 
ing to the usual tricks of rhetoric, but seems the enforced 
utterance of his intellect, and is eminently Wcbsterian. There 
is a granite-like strength in its construction. . . Words 
in his mind are not masters, but instruments. They seem 
selected, or rather clutched, by the faculty or feeling they 
serve. . . lie bends language into the shape of his 
thought, he never accommodates his thought to his language. 
The grave, high, earnest nature of the man looks out upon 
us from his well-knit, massive, compact sentences. . . 
There is a tough, sinewy strength in his diction which gives 
it almost muscular power in forcing its way to the heart and 
understanding. Occasionally his words are of that kind 
which are called " half-battles, stronger than most men's 
deeds." In the course of an abstract discussion, or a clear 
statement, he will throw in a sentence which almost makes 
us spring to our feet. 

In his " English Poets of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury " notice the tribute he pays to books, be- 
ginning " Who shall estimate what vast stores of 
happiness and improvement the domain of im- 
agination has revealed to us ? " Consider his defi- 
nition of what poetry is, and compare it with 



276 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

Emerson's to which your attention was directed 
in the paper on that author. 

It is well, and likewise interesting, to get the 
opinions of different critics on the same subject, 
and thereby avoid the danger of having a one- 
sided view. By all means read Stedman's two 
books, Victorian Poets and Poetry of Apierica ; a 
part of the ground, but only a small part has been 
gone over by other critics. Whipple's most elab- 
orate single volume is on the Elizabethan poets 
only ; Lowell's single papers are on selected 
authors from Chaucer to Keats ; Stedman gives 
" a historical review of the course of British poetry 
during the present reign," with literary and bio- 
graphical criticisms, and you can judge of the 
compass from the fact that there are one hundred 
and fifty British poets who are named for more or 
less criticism. For a concise and well-defined ac- 
count you will find nothing to take its place, and 
the classification and arrangement, with the side 
notes, are such as to be of vast help to the under- 
standing of the conditions and the individuals. 
While reading his comments on any special poem 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, AND OTHER CRITICS. 277 

it will be greatly to your advantage to make your- 
self thoroughly acquainted with the poem itself ; 
that is the true moment and opportunity for so 
doing and for gaining intelligent knowledge which 
under such circumstances will be likely to stay by 
you, and will be of more worth to you than week:^ 
of miscellaneous, disconnected and superficial read, 
ing of the poets. 

In his volume on American poets, Stedman re- 
views the whole ground from the beginning down 
to the poets whose verse appears from week to 
week in our periodicals, and he also devotes nine 
chapters to certain leading poets, one of whom is 
Lowell, and Lowell's prose, even his criticisms, 
the very ones we have been considering are here 
made subjects for this other critic's comment, and 
verj' interesting reading it is for you. He says : 

But one must spend time in gathering knowledge to give 
it out richly, and few comprehend what goes to a page of 
Lowell's manuscript. The page itself, were it a letter or 
press-report, could be written in a quarter-hour ; but sup- 
pose it represents, as in one of his greater essays, the re- 
sult of prolonged studies — the reading, indexing, formulat- 



278 PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

ing works in various languages, upon his shelves or in the 
Harvard library? Of all this he gives the ultimate quin- 
tessence, a distillation fragrant with his own genius. Who 
can estimate the toil of such work ? 

Again : 

Certainly Lowell is a most suggestive essayist. He sets 
us a-thinking, and, after a stretch of comment, halts in by- 
paths, or enlivens us with his sudden wit. He has the in- 
tellect, held to be a mark of greatness, that " puts in motion 
the intellect of others." 

Besides the class of book and solitary articles 
strictly called criticism (which includes a moderate 
list of names there is not space for, among them 
Margaret Fuller), there is a' new form of half- 
descriptive, half-critical work which comes under 
the general title of " studies." 

Thus Higginson has twelve very pleasing papers 
under the head of Short Studies of American Au- 
thors : G. P. Lathrop has A Study of Hawthorne, 
George Willis Cooke has George Eliot ; A Critical 
Study of her Life, Writings and Philosophy : other 
books are within the same plan of work like Abba 
Goold Woolson's George Eliot and her Heroines. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, AND OTHER CRITICS. 279 

When you come, some day, to a careful reading of 
George Eliot's novels, take with them these two 
volumes by American writers for help towards an 
estimate of the foremost woman writer of English 
prose which this century has produced. Cooke's 
is an exposition of her stories with an analysis of 
each with extracts, is reasonably fair and more 
sympathetic than Mrs. Woolson's ; while her study, 
from a different stand-point, directs your thought 
especially to certain failures and lacks in the great 
novelist. 

Of biographical criticism there are such books 
as Cooke's on Emerson, Francis H. Underwood's 
three, on Whittier, Longfellow and Lowell, and 
many others. All such are of advantage in your 
reading of best authors. Also books which have 
literature in general for their theme, like Henry 
Reed's Lectures on English Literature, which, though 
they do not come strictly within the present 
American plan, I cannot refrain from commend- 
ing to you on account of the lovely, teachable 
spirit manifested all through them. He was Pro- 
fessor of English Literature and Rhetoric in the 



28o PLEASANT AUTHORS FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 

University of Pennsylvania, and was lost at sea on 
his return from Europe in 1854. He was a gentle, 
refined man with a most reverent love for books ; 
he valued the guidance of any who had shown 
him where the best was to be found, and he rec- 
ognized the fact that many though surrounded by 
books do not know how to use them. He ad- 
vised only the sweet and sound, that which should 
be a means of culture, developing all that is best 
in man and woman. To him the noble English 
language had a sanctity and dignity of its own 
which he would not have trifled with : he would 
not have it brought down, or in any way debased. 
Let such a thought be with you as you grow up 
with a love of books, and you will have a true ap- 
preciation not only of the strength of the Saxon 
idioms and their grand attributes and possibilities 
in the hands of a master, but you will know how 
to choose the sweet kernels of truth, and learn to 
loathe the evil and to distrust everything which 
confuses the border lines between right and wrong. 



Classified List. — Religious. 



GOOD FIGHT (A); or, George Dana Boardraan and (tw 

Burman Mission. By Rev. A. King. Large i6mo, %i 25. 
GOSPEL LIFE OF JESUS (The). By L. A. Davids. 

i6mo, Si-25. 

HELPFUL THOUGHTS FOR YOUNG MEN. By 
T. D. WooLSEY, D. D., LL. D. i6mo, 60 cents. 
The writer knows and understands the class to whom he speaks, 

and his words are full of practical wisdom. 

LIVING TRUTHS. (Spare Minute Series). From 
Charles Kingslev. Edited by E. E. Brown, with an Intro- 
duction by W. D. Howells. izmo. cloth, gilt top, $1.00. 
One cannot read it without feeling the brotherhood of a soul 

that has suffered, and has learned through suffering that there is 

but one great thing for men to do in this world, and that is to do 

right. — Literary News. 

LORD'S DAY RESCUED (The). By Alexander Ses- 
sions, with Introduction by Henry M. Dexter, D. D. i6mo, 
cloth, 60 cents. 

MEN OP MARK ; or. Heroes of Church History. By Wil- 
liam Marshall, D.D. i2mo, $1.25. 

NOT OF MAN, BUT OF GOD. The last work of Rev. 
J. M. Manning, D.D., late pastor of the Old South Congrega- 
tional Church. i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 
Will charm the minds and win the hearts of all. 

PERFECT MAN (The); or, Jesus an Example of Godly 
Life. By Rev. Harry Jones. $1.00. 

PRAYER MEETING AND ITS IMPROVEMENT 

(The). By Rev. Lewis O. Thompson. i6mo, $1.25. 

An admirable pastoral help, full of the wisest counsel. It 
should be in the hands of every minister in whose parish duU 
prayer meetings are spre.iding dry rot. 

The book will be a real help to pastor and people. — Chicago 
Juier-O'^can. 



Classified List. — Poetry. 



THROUGH THE YEAR WITH THE POETS. - 
December, January, February, March, April, 
May. Arranged and compiled by Oscar Fay Adams. Each 

75 cents. 

Tlie cream of English literature, past and current, has been 
skimmed with a judicious and appreciative hand. — Boston Tran- 
script. 

WAIFS AND THEIR AUTHORS. By A. A. Hop- 
KINS. A collection of poems many of which are now for the 
first time published with the names of the authors. Quarto, 
cloth, gilt, J2.00; quarto, full gilt, gilt edges, jf2.5o. 

WHEN I WAS A CHILD. By Ernest W. Shurtlkff. 
Illustrated, ^i.oo. 
A simple, graceful poem, fresh with memories of school and 

vacation days, of games and sports in the country. — Chicago 

A dvance. 

WHILE SHEPHERDS WATCHED THEIR 
FLOCKS BY NIGHT. Illustrated, ^2.50. 
Nothing more exquisite in the way of a presentation book. — 

B. B. Bulh'tin. 

WOMAN IN SACRED SONG. Compiled and edited 

by Mrs. George Clinton Smith. With an introduction by 

Frances E. Willard. Illustrated. ^3.50. 

It gives a very full representation of the contributions of woman 
to sacred song, thoiigh of course the main tulk of this has been ia 
modern times. — Illustrated Weekly. 
YOUNG FOLKS' POETRY. By A. P. and M. T. 

FoLsuM. A choice selection of poems. i6mo, ^i.oo. 
YOUNG FOLKS' SPEAKER. A collection of Prose 

and Poetry for Declamations, Recitations and Elocutionary 

Exercises. Selected and arranged by Carrib Adelaidb' 

Cooke. i2mo, cloth, illustrated, f,\.oa. 

It deser'^es to become a standard in the schools of the country- 

— B. B. Bulletin. 



Classified List. — Pansy. 



THE PANSY BOOKS. 

There are substantial reasons for the great popularity of the 
' Pansy Books," and foremost among these is their truth to nature 
and to life. The genuineness of the types of character which 
they portray is indeed remarkable. 

" Her stories move alternately to laughter and tears." ... 
" Brimful of the sweetness of evangelical religion." ... 
" Girl life and character portrayed with rare power." ... 
" Too much cannot be said of the insight given into the true way 
of studying and using the word of God." . . . These are a 
few quotations from words of praise everywhere spoken. The 
" Pansy Books " may be purchased by any Sunday-school without 
hesitation as to their character or acceptability. 

Each volume \2mo, $1.50. 

Chautauqua Girls at Home. Links in Rebecca's Life. 

Christie's Christmas. Mrs. Solomon Smith Looking On. 

Divers Women. Modern Prophets. 

Echoing and Re-echoing. Man of the House (The). 

Endless Chain (An). New Graft on the Family Tree (A) 

Ester Ried. One Commonplace Day. 

Ester Ried Yet Speaking. Pocket Measure (The). 

Pour Girls at Chautauqua. Ruth Erskine's Crosses. 

From different Standpoints. Randolphs (The). 

Hall in the Grove (The). Sidney Martin's Christmas. 

Household Puzzles. Those Boys. 

Interrupted. Three People. 

Julia Ried. Tip Lewis and his Lamp. 

King's Daughter (The). Wise and Otherwise. 



Classified Lis I. — Birthday. 



BIRTHDAY. 

ABNOLD BIRTHDAY BOOK. With many original 

Poems. Cloth, gilt, $i.oo; seal, §2. 50. 

The editors are the two daughters of the poet, who have gone 
over the various works of their father with a judicious, as well as a 
loving hand, and have added a collection of gems worthy of the 
publisher's setting. — Interior, Chicago. 

LITTLE POLKS' BIRTHDAY BOOK. Arranged by 
Amanda B. Harris. Twelve full-page illustrations in color, 
and pictures for every day. Square i8mo, cloth, tinted edges, 
f i.oo. 
With each rHyme is a childish picture, some of them being very 

clever, the whole bouna ^n a very artistic cover, and one calculated 
to amuse and please childien. — Churchman. 

POETS' BIRTHDAY BOOK (The). Arranged by 
Amanda B. Harris, with original poems for each month by 
Longfellow, Whittier, Will Carleton and others. Twenty-four 
full-page illustrations, square i8mo, cloth, tinted edges, |i.oo; 
seal, $2.50. 
You cannot select anything prettier for a gift book, — Herald 

of Truth. 

SCRIPTURE BIRTHDAY BOOK. i8mo, illustrated, 
cloth, $1.00; seal, %i. 50. 

SHAKESPEARE BIRTHDAY BOOK. WUti por- 
trait and twelve illustrations. i8mo, cloth, Ji.oo; seal, $2.50. 
This exquisite little birthday book cannot help meeting with 

Immediate and universal favor. — B. B. Bulletin. 

WEDDING DAY BOOK. Edited by Katherine Lek 
Bates, with original illustrations by George F. Barnes. Small 
quarto, extra cloth, bevelled, gilt edges, $1.25. 



Classified List. — Standard Miscellaneous. 

HOLD UP YOUR HEADS, GIRLS ! By Annie H. 

Ryder, ^i.oo. 

It is a book for study, for companionship, and the girl who reads 
it thoughtfully and with an intent to profit by it will get more real 
help and good from it than from a term at the best boarding-school 
in the country. — Boston Transcript. 

HONOR BRIGHT (the story oO. By Charles R. Tai^ 

EOT, author of Royal Lowrie. i2mo, illustrated, $1.25. 

A. charming story full of intense life. 
HOW TO LEARN AND EARN. Half Hours in some 

Helpful Schools. By American authors. One hundred original 

illustrations. i2mo, extra cloth, $1.50. 

The book treats largely of public institutions, training schools, 
etc., and shows what maybe accomplished by patient concentrated 
effort. — Farm and Fireside, 

HOW WE ARE GOVERNED. By Anna Laurens 

Dawes. i2mo, J1.50. 

An explanation of the constitution and government of the 
United States, national. State, and local. 

A concise, systematic, and complete study of the great principleb 
which underlie the National existence. — Cliicago Inter-Ocean. 

IN LEISLER'S TIMES. A story-study of Knickerbocker 
New York. By E. S. Brooks. With twenty-four drawings by 
W. T. Smedley. $1.50. 

Though designedly for young folks' reading, this volume is a 
very careful and minute study of a hitherto half-obscured and 
neglected phase of«American history, and will be given a perma- 
nent place in historical literature. — American Bookseller. 

JOSEPHUS FLAVIUS, ( the Works of ). A new 

edition of William Whiston's Famous Translations. 8vo, cloth, 
^ilt, 100 illustrations, $3.00. Household Edition. i2mo, cloth, 
gilt top, illustrated, $2.00. 

This edition is admirable and will make new friends for the easy 
and conceited old chronicler. — B. B. Bulletin. 



Classified List. — Standard Miscellaneous. 

THE TRIPLE " E." By Mrs. S. R. Graham Clark. 
i2mo, paper, illustrated, 25 cts. Cloth, $1.50. 
It cannot fail to make a strong impression on the minds of those 

who read it. — B. B. Bulletin. 

THUCYDIDES. Translated into English with marginal 
analysis and index. By B. Jowett, M. A., Master of Balliol 
College, Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford, Doc- 
tor of Theology in the University of Leyden. Edited with 
introduction to American edition by Andrew P. Peabody, D. D. 
LL. D. 8vo, $3.50. Half calf, J6.00. 

WARLOCK O' GLENWARLOCK. By Georgb 

MacDonald. i2mo, fully illustrated, $1.50. 
At his best, there are icvi contemporary novelists so well worth 
reading as MacDonald. — Boston Journal. 

WEIGHED AND WANTING. By George MacDon- 
ald. i2mo, cloth, $1.50. 

WHAT'S MINE'S MINE. By George MacDonald. 

Ifi.50. 

Let all who enjoy a book full of fire and life and purpose read 
this capital story. — IVoman^ s Jmtrtial. 

WILD FLOWERS, AND WHERE THEY 
GROW. By Amanda B. Harris. Svo, extra cloth, 
beautifully bound, gilt edges, J3.00. 
It is a book in which all true lovers of nature will delight. 

^ B. B. Bulletin, 

WONDER STORIES OF SCIENCE. Uniform with 

" Plucky Boys," i2mo, cloth, iji.50. 

To improve as well as to amuee young people is the object of 
these twenty-one sketches, and they fill this purpose wonderfully 
well. — Texas Si/tings. 

WITHIN THE SHADOW. By Dorothy Holrovd. 

i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 

" The author has skill in invention with the purest seutimei^ 
«nd good natural style. " — Boston Globe. 



BOOKS FOR BOYS. 

ALL AMONG THE LIGHTHOUSES. By Mary Bradford 
Crowninshield, wife of Commander Crowninshield. Finely illustrated 
from photographs and original drawings. Extra cloth, quarto, $2. i;o. 
An attractive book for boys, giving the account of an actual trip along the- 

coast of Maine by a lighthouse inspector with two wide awake boys in charge. 

The visits to the numerous lighthouses not only teem with incident, but 

abound in information that will interest every one. 

BOYS' HEROES. By Edward Everett Hale. Reading Union 

Library. i6mo, illustrated, cloth, gi.oo. 

Twelve chapters containing the story told in Dr. Hale's characteristic style, 
of a dozen characters famed in history as worthy to bear the title of heroes, 
and the story of whose deeds and lives possesses a special interest for boys. 

PLUCKY BOYS. Business Boys' Library. By the author of " John 

Hahfax, Gentleman," and other authors. Ji.oo. 

" A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck. " — Pres{dc7ii Garfield. Spirited 
narratives of boys who have conquered obstacles and become successful busi- 
ness men ; or of other young fellows who have shown fearlessness and " fight " 
in situations of danger. 

A BOY'S WORKSHOP. By A Boy and His Friends, ^i.oo. 

Just the book for boys taking their first lesson in the use of tools. All sorts 
of practical suggestions and sound advice, with valuable illustrations fill the 
volume. 

BOY LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES NAVY. By H, H. 

Clark. i2mo, illustrated, ^1.50. 

If there is anything in the way of human attire which more than any other 
commands the admiration and stirs the enthusiasm of the average boy of what- 
ever nation, it is the trim uniform and shining buttons that distinguish tha 
jolly lads of the " Navy." In this graphically written and wonderfully enter- 
taining volume, boy life in the Navy of the United States is described by a 
Baval officer, in a manner which cannot fail to satisfy the boys. 

.JOW SUCCESS IS WON. By Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton. $1.00. 
This is the best of the recent books of this popular class of biography; all 
Its " successful men " are Americans, and with two or three exceptions they 
are living and in the full tide of business and power. In each case, the facts 
have been furnished to the author by the subject of the biography, or by fam- 
ily friends ; and Mrs. Bolton has chosen from this authentic material those 
incidents which most fully illustrate the successive steps and the ruling princi- 
ples, by which success has been gained. A portrait accompanies each biog- 
raphy. 

STORIES OP DANGER AND ADVENTURE. By Rose G. 

Ki.vgsley, B. p. Shillaber, Frederic Schwatka and others. j5i.2S. 

Fascinating stones of thrilling incidents in all sorts of places and with all 
kinds of people. Very fully illustrated. 

WONDER STORIES OP TRAVEL. By Eliot McCormick, 
Ernest Ingersoll, E. E. Brown, David Ker and others. Fully illus- 
trated. ^1.50. 
From the opening story, " A Boy's Race with General Grant at Ephesus," 

ts the last, " A Child in Florence," this book is full of stir and interest. 

Indian, Italian, Chinese, German, English, Scotch, French, Arabian and 

Egyptian scenes and people are described, and there is such a feast of gpod 

things one hardly knows which to choose first. 



BOOKS FOR GIRLS. 

HOLD UP YOUR HEADS, GIRLS ! By AnnieH. Ryder, $i.ao. 

One of the brightest, breeziest books for girls ever written ; as sweet and 
wholesome as the breath of clover on a clear June morning, and as full of life 
and inspiration as a trumpet call. The writer, a popular teacher, speaks of 
what she knows, and has put her own magnetism into these little plain, sensi- 
ble, earnest talks, and the girls will read them and be thrilled by them as by a 
personal presence. 

A NEW DEPARTURE FOR GIRLS. By Margaret Sidnbt. 

75 cents. 

In this bright little story, we see what may be really done in the way of self- 
Bupport by young women of sturdy independence and courage, with no false 
pride to deter them from taking up the homely work which they are capable 
of doing. It will give an incentive to many a baffled, discouraged girl who 
has failed from trying to work in the old ruts. 
HOW THEY LEARNED HOUSEWORK. By Christina 

Goodwin. 75 cents. 

Four merry schoolgirls during vacation time are inducted into the mysteries 
of chamber-work, cooking, washing, ironing, putting up preserves and cutting 
and making underclothes, all under the careful supervision of one of the moth- 
ers. The whole thing is made attractive for them in a way that is simply cap- 
tivating, and the story of their experiment is full of interest. 
A GIRL'S ROOM. With plans and designs for work upstairs and 

down, and entertainments for herself and friends. By Some Friends of 

THE Girls, ^i.oo. 

This dainty volume not only shows girls how to make their rooms eosey and 
attractive at small trouble and expense, but also how to pass a social evening 
with various games, and to prepare many pretty and useful articles for them- 
6elves and friends. 

CHRISTIE'S CHRISTMAS. By Pansy. i2mo, fully illustrated, 

#1.50- 

Christie is one of those delightfully life-like, naive and interesting charac- 
ters which no one so well as Pansy can portray, and in the study of which 
every reader will find delight and profit. 

ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. By Mrs. S. D. Power. 

i6mo, extra doth, $1.00. 

Articles on household matters, written in a clear, fascinating style out of 
the experience of a writer who knows whereof she speaks. Every girl and 
young housekeeper should own a copy. 

BRAVE GIRLS. By Mary Hartwell Catherwood, Nora Perry, 

Mrs. John Sherwood and others. J1.50. 

Here are deeds of stirring adventure and peril, and quiet heroism no less 
brave, to incite girls to be faithful and fearless, strong and true to the right. 

NEW EVERY MORNING: Selections of Readings for 

Girls. By Annie H. Ryder. Ji.oo. 

This is just such a book as one would expect from the popular author of 
" Hold up your Heads, Girls ! " and will be no less a favorite. The_ selections 
are all choice and apprporiate, and will be eagerly read each morning by tba 
happy owners. 



